Where there is Darkness
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: Captain Rogers wakes to find himself tied down and blinded in combat, with no memory of his injury. Disorientated and afraid, he must reconcile himself to the possibility of life without sight, but is all as it seems? Rogers centric, others appear. Fairly mild T for inferred interrogation sequences. My first foray in to Marvel fanfiction (unless you count the Norse mythology one).
1. Where

**Summary: Captain Rogers wakes to find himself tied down and blinded in combat, with no memory of his injury. Disorientated and afraid, he must reconcile himself to the possibility of life without sight, but is all as it seems**

**Set: Between Avengers Assemble and Winter Soldier**

**Spoilers: Avengers Assemble and Captain America: First Avenger. Also slight spoilers for other first-round Marvel films.**

**Genres: Hurt/comfort to action.**

**Rating: T for threat and inferred interrogation sequences (nothing seen, but what's implied is to my mind nasty).**

**Disclaimer: ****This world belongs Marvel. Only the original characters and this plot are my own.**

**A note on formatting: The lines with only a comma on them are not intended as time breaks. They are my attempt to preserve some of my original formatting and break the text up to make it easier to read.**

* * *

It was dark. It was quiet. What time was it? Steve Rogers shifted himself to roll over and look at the clock on his bedside table, sleep still clouding his brain. He froze.

Something was pressing across his shoulders, and something else on his left wrist. A cuff? Something was over his face, no, just his eyes. He couldn't see anything. Experimentally, he pulled his right arm up. Something tight around that wrist held it in place. Captain Rogers's breath caught in his throat. Restraints. He was lying in restraints. In that case, the thing on his eyes was a blindfold. He'd been taken prisoner. He didn't know where, he didn't know who was holding him, he didn't know why.

Readiness, the unnatural strength he relied on, flooded his system. He was in very real danger where he was. He had to get out. If he tried to escape, would he attract the attention of his captors? It had to be to be pretty dark beyond the blindfold, no light was showing through it, maybe they weren't watching. Even if they were, their response might give him clues as to what on earth was going on.

Captain Rogers relaxed very determinedly, breathing out slowly. He gritted his teeth, breathed in and pulled his right arm up with all his might. The edge of the strap bit in to his wrist, he couldn't move his upper arm much, there was another strap just below where it joined his body. It had to give. He pulled harder. He clenched his fist and redoubled his efforts, arching his back as far as he could to the left. He needed more leverage. He had to be able to do this. He was not going to be beaten by a leather strap. He needed a hand free. Maybe the left side was weaker. He switched sides, blood rushed back to his right hand as the strap bit his left. He hissed in effort. Still nothing moved. His legs. He grabbed the surface of the bed with both hands and jerked both legs up towards his body. The restraints didn't move, and there was another one over his thighs, a handspan up from his knees. The strap round his shoulders dug in to the muscle of his chest. Rogers pushed himself back up the bed, gasping now, pulling on the straps almost at random, hard, painful pulls. He had to get free. These shouldn't be able to hold him. He had to get free. He had to -

"Woah, Captain, hold on! Hold on!" A woman's voice somewhere off to the left. Rodgers stopped struggling. He was getting nowhere. Answers might be as good as escape right now. "You're safe. Just let me undo these." She said. Rogers took a deep breath and released it again. Small, fine hands brushed his shoulder, undoing the strap.

"What is going on?"

"This is a SHIELD facility Captain, you're safe."

"You said that. Why am I tied down?"

"You were wounded in combat, Captain. We thought we were losing you, you've had quite a lot of violent seizures. You were a risk to yourself and to us." What? When had that happened? The last thing he remembered was setting off from the camp he'd been training at for the past month. He hadn't been in real combat for six weeks or more, and he'd come out of that without a scratch.

"I don't remember that." The strap across his shoulders opened

"That's not surprising." She moved on to his left hand.

"What happened?" She didn't answer. "Look, I think I have a right to know why I've woken up tied down and blindfold."

"Some more of the aliens that you and the other Avengers drove out of New York turned up. You, Agent Romanova and Agent Barton went to fight them, but they had some sort of chemical weapon we haven't seen before." His left hand was free. He reached up to take the blindfold off. "Wait, wait, wait, no!" The woman shouted, grabbing his wrist. He could have pulled free, but he didn't. "That's there for a reason. Let me finish telling you what happened. If I let go, do you promise not to take the bandage off?" Rogers hesitated. If she was lying, his odds of fighting his way out right now weren't good, not until he knew what he was likely to be up against. If she was telling the truth, he shouldn't try.

"OK. I promise."

"OK." She reached for his right hand." The aliens had a weapon we haven't seen before. They were shooting at faces, Romanova got away unharmed, but you and Barton both got hit in the eyes." This didn't sound good. "You both went down almost straight away, screaming in agony. Both of you were brought here for treatment. We're trying to save your sight." Oh no. The blackness seemed to close around Rogers as she said it. He was a soldier. What was he if he was blind? He couldn't live like that. He couldn't walk around with a cane for the rest of his life. He forced himself to be calm. "That's what the bandage is for."

"Where's Barton now?" Rogers's right hand came loose. She moved on to his legs.

"I'm sorry Captain, I know you and Agent Barton were friends, but we lost him. The weapon did something to his brain. He died about 24 hours ago." Barton was dead.

"Romanova?"

"She left. She stuck around for a bit, she left in the small hours this morning. I don't wanna be the one trying to talk to her right now." That sounded right.

"After Barton..?"

"Yeah." His legs came free. He pushed himself in to a sitting position. No giddiness. That was something at least.

"Can I talk to her?"

"Captain, she's working, she's off coms, you know how she is."

"You've found her before, find her."

"There are probably people trying, Captain." Rogers bit his tongue. He needed to think logically. He needed to be rational. He needed not to panic. He needed not to let the fact he might be facing a life without sight affect him. The straps on his ankles fell away.

"Fury?"

"As Fury usually is, he's working. He's on the other side of the continent right now."

"Can you telephone him for me?"

"Look, Captain, I know you've been very valuable to Fury," Have been. "but he doesn't hold on to sentimental value. Until you're fit to work for him, you're not his concern. It's blunt, but that's the way he is." Rogers sighed.

"How long have I been here?"

"Three days, a bit more now." He nodded. Fury really didn't look back.

"Why couldn't I break the restraints?"

"What?"

"Not many restraints can hold me. I can usually get loose."

"Ah. We gave you Soma, that'll be why." What on earth was Soma? "Oh, Soma. It relaxes your muscles, we were trying to calm the seizures down, but it would probably do that too. Don't worry, it'll wear off in a couple of hours. Are you in any pain?" Rogers shifted himself.

"No."

"Well at least those drugs are working. Is there anything I can get you?" Rogers drew breath slowly. His eyes back, a familiar voice, a familiar place, remembering what had happened…

"Water would be good."

"I'll go get you some. And tell Doctor Ryman that you're up."

,

Rogers heard the door open and close. He drew his knees up to his chest and buried his head on his forearms. He felt the bandage against the skin of his arms. He was blind. He was actually blind. He could feel himself shaking. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't be blind. But he was blind, and Barton was dead. He shuffled himself in to a kneeling position, clasping his hands in front of himself. This at least felt normal. He'd always prayed with his eyes closed.

"God," He breathed. "Help me. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to do it." There was more he needed to say, it took him a minute to bring himself to say it. "God, you let this happen to me and you must have had a reason for it, even if I can't see it, understand it, right now." He took a breath and half released it. "Give me serenity to accept what I can't change, courage to change what I can and wisdom to know the difference. Help me to settle here as I am and find a way to… be." It felt like a long shot. He had no idea how he could ever learn to live like this. "I know that Clint Barton has gone to you, I pray that he's safe in your care." Again, long shot. He had no idea if Barton had been a Christian. He should've said something to him. It was too late now. "God, show me what to do. Amen."

,

Rogers sat up again. He felt a bit steadier now. He'd have felt easier for just one familiar voice. There was no pillow on this bed, and no blanket either. He was dressed in a hospital gown. They probably needed access to his veins or whatever. He heard a door open.

"Captain, you're awake." A man's voice this time, deep and slightly southern sounding. Rogers turned his head to the sound instinctively. The door closed again.

"Doctor Ryman I presume."

"Nurse Grogan told you?"

"Yes."

"I'd imagine that you have a lot of questions right now."

"You'd be right." Footsteps drawing nearer. Two sets, one heavier than the other.

"Here's your water Captain." The same woman, Nurse Grogan, said. Rogers held out his left hand. She guided it to a plastic cup. "There's a straw in it, I thought that might be easier."

"Thank you." He groped for the straw with his right hand and put the end in his mouth. He'd needed that. "Do you know what Nurse Grogan told me?"

"Yes. All of what she told you is correct."

"How likely is it that you can save my sight?" A pause.

"Quite frankly, Captain, I don't know. We've never seen this weapon before. It ate back along your optic nerve and gave you meningitis, which we now have under control. If we were talking about someone who hadn't survived being frozen for seventy years then thawed, I would say slim. The nerves may or may not re-grow, partly it depends on how much of the tissue in your eyes dies and whether they can regrow. It's possible you'll lose both eyes, it's possible you'll regain both, it's possible you'll be taking style tips from Director Fury."

"What? Just lose one?"

"Uh-huh." Rogers took a breath slowly.

"Well I guess that's better than losing both." He heard something like the shadow of a laugh, he couldn't tell which person. "How likely am I to die now?"

"Unlikely. You're sitting up, drinking water and talking sense to me. In a way I guess we've already won." Rogers dropped his head.

"Doesn't feel that way though, huh?" Grogan said. It was odd not to need to turn his head away to hide his eyes.

"Yeah." No one spoke for a moment. "Have you got a plan?"

"We've got a list of things to try, most of them will require anaesthesia, since touching your eyes hurts you so much and the smallest twitch from you could do irreparable damage." Rogers drew a breath slowly.

"OK."

"We'll leave you be now, shall we?" Grogan said. He didn't respond. Both sets of footsteps began to move away.

"Hey, before you go," Both sets of footsteps stopped. "Can we loose the restraints now?" A pause.

"I guess." Doctor Ryman said. Rogers put his legs over the edge of the bed furthest from them. His toes couldn't reach the floor, but he couldn't be far off.

"Hey, steady there." Grogan put in. "Don't hurt yourself." He smiled.

"Ma'am, I can fall much further than this can possibly be without hurting myself. It can't be over a couple of feet." He pushed off the bed. It was only a few inches down. "See?" He reached for the head of the bed, metal rails, ran his hand down the nearest bed leg and set his water down next to it. "Same principles as night ops. If you put something down, put it down next to something you can feel." He ran his hand along the mattress, away from the head of the bed. "I have the neck strap."

"OK, pull the part under the mattress out." He pulled. The strap slid out easily. She must have undone it on the other side. He threw the end back across the bed.

"Next one?"

"Yep, go ahead." It steadied him to do even this little thing, just to be able to use his hands.

"You adapt fast, Captain." Grogan said as he stood up from pulling the last strap free.

"I'm a commando, ma'am. It goes with the territory."

"Captain," The doctor began. Rogers looked up at him, well, picked his head up in the doctor's direction. "I'll see you for treatment in about ten hours." Rogers nodded.

"OK."

**Reviews very welcome**


	2. There

**I apologise for not making this clearer at the outset. This is set two months after Avengers Assemble.**

* * *

Rogers lost track of time. Not having any idea whether it was night or day was disorientating. He'd drunk the water dry, he'd been told that his eating anything was risky because of the anaesthesia. He'd been sustained on IV fluids for days now ("though that's not easy with you, Captain. You clot fast and clog the lines up unless we spike everything with twice as much Heparin"). He was starving hungry. A piece of string had been tied between the foot of the bed and the screened toilet in the corner of the room. He'd been given a pillow and a blanket and left alone. He was lying flat on the bed, unable to sleep. The panic at first discovering he'd been blinded had gone, it was more like dread now, powerless dread. He just had to trust in the people taking care of him, and God, obviously. He sat up, pushing the blanket away. There was no point lying still if he couldn't rest. He got off the bed and laid his left hand on the wall. How big was the room? What else was in it? He held his right hand out in front of him so he wouldn't walk in to a wall and began to walk forwards, away from the bed, counting his paces aloud.

"One, two, three, four," He felt the wall ahead of him. "five." His left shoulder was in a corner, he was facing the wall. He quarter-turned right and started again.

"One, two, three, four, five, six," He felt a wall with his outstretched hand and something sticking half an inch out from the wall with his left. He ran his hand up, following the ridge almost as high as he could reach, then it turned away from him along the wall. On the far side of the ridge, there was a grove, a deep grove between the ridge and something that felt different to the wall and moved a tiny bit when he touched it. He ran his hand down. Something metal and bent, a door handle. He'd found the door. That might be useful. Another pace on was the next corner. Five and a half paces of bare wall later, he found the screen, light, movable cloth, he imagined it to be blue, in front of the toilet. There was a string here. He'd feel a bit of an idiot if he tripped over it. It hung fairly loosely, about six inches off the ground. He went back to the wall next to the toilet. It ought to be about seven paces to the next corner and, yes, it was. So two back to bed? Yes. He caught his shin on the metal frame of the bed when he tried to take a third. He climbed over the bed and went round again, faster this time, then again without the hand out in front of him, then again without a hand on the wall. That didn't go so well at first. Apparently walking in straight lines is harder when you can't see where you're going. He tried the other way four or five times, then sat down on the end of the bed. How could he make this harder? He could do it faster, start running. He'd run headlong in to something at some point, but who cared? He didn't break easily.

He set off clockwise at a fast walk. His paces were longer at this speed, so he did quite a lot of hitting walls at first. He missed the comforting weight of his shield on his arm. What had they done with it? He'd ask when someone next came in. Bit by bit, Rogers picked the pace up, vaulting the bed, jumping the string between the bed and the toilet. It felt good to get his blood moving, to just push himself a bit. He felt more alive, more like himself. Could he run this the other way, anticlockwise? It couldn't be much harder. Could he do it at this speed? Not so much. On the first lap, he ran headlong in the bed and landed flat on top of it, his head and arms hanging down the far side. Well, he couldn't have picked a softer place to land if he'd tried. He righted himself, smiling. He was OK. In spite of his eyes, he was mostly OK. However bad this was right now, it could be a lot worse. He could still stand up, he could still run, he could still think, he still had all his limbs, he was still alive. He ought to be grateful for that. He kind of was. He started running again, a fraction slower this time.

Rogers lost count of laps somewhere over forty, then decided that it was stupid to have to keep jumping over the guide string. Undoing the knots at either end of it was not easy without seeing them. It took him a frustratingly long time to work out that the knot by the screen was a doubled eight knot, then to undo it and realise that the other knot was completely different. He'd made a mess of it trying to undo it like an eight knot and started trying to undo his mistake when there was a knock at the door.

"Captain?" Nurse Grogan was back.

"Come in." He bundled the string up and got to his feet as he heard the door open.

"You're up?" He nodded, turning his head towards her voice.

"I'm not good at doing nothing."

"OK, well the doctor is ready for you now. I've got a wheelchair for you here." Rogers drew breath slowly. To let himself be wheeled was to let himself lose track of where he was entirely. And he hated being treated like an invalid, though right now he was one.

"If it's all the same to you Ma'am, I'd rather take your arm and walk." She didn't reply for a moment. "Look, I've been on my feet most of the time I've been awake, I feel fine."

"OK then." He stepped towards her, one hand outstretched. "Did you untie the string?" She took his hand in hers and put it on her forearm. She was maybe eight inches shorter than him, moderate to slim build.

"Yeah, I don't think I need it any more." She took a step forward. He followed her.

"Man do you learn fast." She said, as though to herself. She led him through what must have been the doorway. The floor felt different on the other side of the door. She twisted to close the door behind him, then set off again. This was easy, actually, to follow her lead and match her paces. The nurse had the sense to walk far enough left that he didn't hit the wall. He could do this and talk at the same time.

"Hey, do you know what they did with my shield?"

"Ah… I think Fury had it put in storage until you're fit to use it again. Why?"

"I'm just kind of attached to it. I just wanted to know it was safe."

"It is safe, Captain, don't you worry. Turning left." He followed her lead, just making his steps a bit longer. About eight steps further on, they turned right, about the same angle as the left turn, so this corridor was parallel to the one his room was on. Voices ahead, mostly men, talking quietly.

"We're nearly there, Captain." Grogan said. He nodded his assent. The floor was different here, rougher, colder. The men's voices had stopped. "OK, the threshold sticks up a little bit." He picked his feet up a bit higher. The floor changed again to smooth, cool lino.

"Captain."

"Doctor Ryman?" He wasn't entirely sure.

"Yes, still me, and Doctors O'Brady and Michaels." Rogers would have nodded to them if he'd had the first idea where they were. "We sent Grogan with a wheelchair. Did she decide she couldn't be bothered to push you?" Rogers smiled. Ryman was quite obviously joking.

"No Sir, I prefer to walk."

"OK then, if you could come and lie down on the table for us, we'll get you under, then we can start." He was about to object that he had no idea where the table was, then Grogan led him forwards again.

"About your hip height, six feet ahead and a bit left." He put the hand that wasn't on her arm out in front of him and found the edge of the table, then the far side, then the ends. No one seemed to mind him taking his time.

"Do you want it lower?" Grogan asked.

"No, I'm OK." He jumped up and lay down on his back. This felt really vulnerable. He just had to trust them.

"Michaels, can you draw up 220 migs of Propofol, just give it slowly, OK? Brady, set that up." Presumably Ryman had pointed. This was kind of scary. "OK Captain, once you're out, and we're sure you're out, we'll have a look at your eyes and based on that decide what we're going to do. You've had no headache, stiff neck…"

"No Sir. Apart from my eyes, I feel fine."

"Are your eyes hurting you right now."

"No Sir."

"OK, lets use the vein in his foot, his cephalics have taken a lot of crap in the past few days."

"Try not to flinch Captain." One of the other doctors, O'Brady or Michaels said, as someone pressed firmly on his foot. A pin-prick, whatever they'd stuck in him stung. "OK, it's in."

"The drug'll take a minute or two to kick in, Captain. Just try to relax." This he did not like; lying still and waiting to be knocked out by a bunch of people he'd literally never seen. Though if they'd wanted him dead, they'd have shot him. Thinking felt like too much effort, he couldn't really feel much any more. He just had to trust them. He seemed to be floating above the table, not lying on it. Strange light shimmered all around him. He remembered nothing more.

**Please review**


	3. Is

**As I said before, a line with only a comma on it does not necessarily indicate a time break, it's just me trying to bring the site's formatting more in line with mine.**

* * *

Rogers jerked. He was lying on something soft, under a blanket, it was dark, he wasn't hurt. He relaxed again, with an effort. Just a dream. He breathed out slowly. Just a dream. He was in bed, something was over his eyes. He reached up to move it, then he remembered. He was blind. This wasn't his bed, it was a hospital bed in a SHIELD unit, they were trying to save his sight. He sat up. His eyes stung, they hadn't yesterday, or whenever he'd last woken up.

And Barton was dead. If they'd been fighting together, Barton would have been under his command. It had been his, Rogers's, responsibility to keep him alive whatever happened. And he knew Barton. He knew how much damage he could deal and how much he could take. Barton should have been well back from the fighting, he was effectively a sniper. Why had he put him anywhere near the main danger? Had he even done that, or had they been flanked, or had Barton moved without orders? Rogers buried his head in his hands, his eyes really did sting. He couldn't remember. He pulled the aliens that Loki had brought to Earth to the front of his mind, the strange smell of them, something between hot metal and singed hair, the way they moved… He could only remember them in New York. He'd seen trauma cause memory loss quite a few times, presumably that was what was going on. But it galled him, to have lost a man in combat and not remember how, not remember if he could have prevented it. After Bucky… he'd run that raid through his head a thousand times, looking for ways he could have made it safer, saved his friend. As much as it hurt to do that, he had to. He owed it to men he lost, he owed it to everyone he commanded, to try and make sure he didn't make the same mistake twice. There was no point in brooding over it right now. He couldn't review what he couldn't remember.

,

Was he in the same room? It wouldn't hurt to check. He got out of bed. He was steady on his feet. He paced the walls of the room clockwise, everything was as it had been yesterday, if it was yesterday, even the string he'd left by the right foot of the bed was still there, he hadn't managed to get the second knot undone. Maybe he should tie knots in it to count days, or treatment cycles or whatever. This was the second time he'd woken up in here, so two knots, close in to the post. He tucked the string away again and shook his head. The stinging wasn't going away any time soon.

Rogers was out of his routine. He hadn't prayed yet. He should rule to do it when he knotted the string, that way he was less likely to forget to do either one of them. He shuffled left on his knees a bit, clasped his hands and lent against the side of the bed. This still felt more normal than anything else did, he'd never used his eyes when he was praying.

"God, thank you that I'm still alive. Thank you that I'm not in pain to speak of, thank you that I'm safe here, thank you for putting me with people who've got the skills to help me. And thank you for calming me down yesterday. I know that fear means not trusting you to look after me when you've promised that you will, that you make all things work together for those who love you," Romans 8 somewhere. He couldn't exactly check. Even if he'd been able to get his hands on a Bible, he wouldn't have been able to read it. "and I'm sorry. Help me not to go back to that, help me to trust that you'll do what's best for me, even if that means being blind." He sighed. "God, help me believe that. I can't right now. I know you've given blind men their sight back before. God, I… I want to see. I don't know what use I am if I can't, so yeah, I guess I'm praying you'll heal me, but I know you gave me my sight-" He took a steadying breath. "-so it's yours to take away. I pray that if there are any of the aliens left on the loose," He heard the door unlatching. "they'd be caught quickly before they can do this to anyone else. In the name of Jesus, firstborn of creation, I pray. Amen." He heard the door close again and got to his feet.

"I didn't know you were a praying man." Nurse Grogan's voice.

"I always have been Ma'am. If God wants to talk to us, who are we to turn our backs?" There was a short silence.

"Does it help?" Without thinking, he tilted his head slightly, which had to look stupid since he couldn't see.

"If nothing else, it calms you down, and God tells us to pray to him, so for that reason alone we should." A slightly longer silence.

"Are you OK? Do you feel any different to yesterday? I brought you water in case." He heard her stepping forwards. He stepped round the bed and advanced cautiously.

"Thank you." He couldn't hear where she was so well now he was moving. He held out one hand, then felt a plastic cup in it.

"No worries. There's a straw." He found the straw and took a sip. "Anyway, how are you?"

"I still feel mostly fine, my eyes sting at the moment."

"When did that start?"

"When I woke up."

"OK, I'll talk to Doctor Ryman about that. Anything else you want to tell us?"

"I'm kind of hungry." He heard her draw breath.

"OK, since you're under anaesthetic so much, it's not the safest thing in the world for you to be eating right now."

"I'm guessing you've read my files."

"Some and some."

"OK, well it probably says in there that I need quite a bit more energy than most people. It doesn't seem to be a problem yet, but it could become one."

"You are on IV glucose all the time you're under, Captain." He nodded.

"OK, so long as you know. How long will it be until the next…"

"Quite a while. Twelve hours, to be exact. I'd go back to bed if I were you." Rogers sighed.

"OK." Grogan walked back to the door and left him alone again. He drained his water. He didn't need to find a wall to know which way to turn to get back to bed. Rogers lay down and pulled the blanket up over himself. His eyes were still stinging like mad. He'd forget about it soon enough.

,

But he didn't. The longer he lay still, the more his eyes bothered him. More than anything else, the feeling reminded him of having been chopping up onions, then rubbing his eye, except it wasn't going away. And his stomach was starting to bother him. He knew for a fact he hadn't eaten anything for two days, and probably not for the previous three, since he'd been wounded. Adrenaline must have kept him from feeling it yesterday, he'd been pretty freaked to wake up tied down and blind with no idea where he was. He was pretty sure these people weren't going to hurt him. They could have killed him easily, but he was still alive and, all things considered, comfortable. Except for his blasted eyes.

This was pointless. He wasn't going to sleep, he knew he wasn't. He threw the blanket back and got out of bed. Without really deciding to, he started pacing the edge of the room, once at a walk each way, then he started running. This wasn't much good though. He didn't have the space, or the guts, to get any real speed up, he'd go crashing in to walls and he couldn't make himself do that repeatedly, even if it didn't really hurt. He stopped in the space behind the bed, furthest from the door and dropped to the ground on hands and knees. He set his arms a bit wider than his shoulders, angled his neck as though he was staring at a point about a yard ahead of him (he'd have to mind that he didn't drop his head, since he couldn't actually stare at a point), pushed his feet out behind him and started doing push-ups. This at least wouldn't make him collide with anything and it felt like a bit more effort. How long could he keep it up? He switched to diamond form after twenty, the pull moved from the front of his chest to the outside of his upper arms and along his back. He kept it up for three or four rounds, twenty normal push-ups, twenty diamond ones. He was breathing hard when he got up again, his heart going faster and harder. It felt good. He went two laps of the room each way to stretch his muscles out, then stopped again in the same place. What could he do next? Climbs and narrows. He dropped and started.

Rogers carried on for what felt like a couple of hours or more, jogging round the room a couple of times, then stopping and doing whatever exercise he thought of (he ran out of push up variations quite quickly) until he felt like he'd done enough, then jogging again. By the time he stopped, he was sweating and breathing harder. It was stuffy in here. He wanted to wash off, but there was no water in here, except the toilet and he wasn't that desperate. That was a thought though, he'd been here five days now, he hadn't washed himself in that time. Had someone else washed him or was he filthy? There wasn't a lot he could do about it right now either way. He sat back down on the bed, pulling the pillow up behind him. He'd made himself thirsty again and there was no way he knew of to get more water. He'd stopped feeling hungry though. He raised a hand towards his eyes, then stopped and lowered it. Rubbing his eyes was probably not a good idea. He had no idea what sort of state they were in, barring that they still stung and he couldn't see anything. He still didn't feel like he'd get to sleep. He might have read something or other, but since he couldn't see, that wasn't going to happen.

Rogers sighed. He was alone with his thoughts whether he liked it or not. And with God. If you asked God to walk with you, you were never alone. God understood how he felt right now, he knew what it was like inside Rogers's head. That thought made him feel less isolated.

He sat still for a long time, not doing anything, not really thinking anything, maybe he'd started to doze before restlessness kicked in again. He didn't feel that burning need to run any more, just a need not to sit still, and he was hungry again. He got up and paced aimlessly, listening hard. He'd spent a lot of yesterday, if it was yesterday, working the room out by touch, he'd kind of forgotten about sound. He'd heard an engine start earlier, a biggish one by the sound of it, probably one of those big black cars SHIELD used a lot. Near the door, there was the quiet hiss of a water pipe. They weren't in a city, they couldn't be. There was nowhere near enough background noise. Unless they were underground. No, the engine hadn't echoed enough. The car or truck or whatever had been outside, so they were probably in the middle of nowhere.

"_Shines the name – Rodger Young  
Fought and died for the men he marched among_." He hadn't really decided to start singing. His voice was dry and a bit unsteady. It wasn't as though he had anything better to do. He sat back down on the bed and drew his knees up.

"_To the everlasting glory of the Infantry  
Lives the story of Private Rodger Young._

_In an ambush lay a company of riflemen-_  
_Just grenades against machine guns in the gloom_

-" He sang the song through, with quite a lot of "something" in the verses, his voice warming up as he went. He'd forgotten the fifth verse completely. He had a feeling there was a fifth verse. He vaguely remembered Dugan getting up on a table in the mess and singing it very loudly after a successful raid. He'd found Dugan's grave in Oregon. He'd survived the war, gone on to work as a drill Sergeant once he was too old to run as a commando and died at home of a heart attack in his eighties. He could have done worse really.  
"_We're the D-day dodgers out in Italy,  
Always on the vino, always on the spree,_" He doubted he'd remember all of this one either. He remembered a British driver teaching it to them on a long and muddy drive in the pouring rain when they were all wet and cold. It had been late in the war, but he'd been sitting on Bucky's right, so not that late. It must have been about a month before Bucky'd died.

There had been a lot of songs in The War, some of them he didn't care to repeat. He remembered Bucky standing on a crate of something in camp once and singing 'Hitler has only got one ball' like a show girl, just to see if he could get away with it. He'd ended up conducting a chorus of about three squadrons worth of men. Rogers shook his head and smiled. That'd been quite early on, not long after Bucky'd been put back on active duty. Rogers had got an earful from a superior officer then too, about how on earth he expected to run precision raids with a bunch of soldiers that out of control. He'd given his answer so many times he felt like a broken record by the start of '45:

"Sir, while they're in the field, they'd charge a machine gun in the open alone if I told them to. Nobody can stand to attention the whole time, and while they're safe enough, so long as they're not doing any harm, I don't mind them messing about." Some officers had ordered his men to stop anyway, others had ordered him to give the order, others had let them alone.

Rogers shook his head and gritted his teeth at the stinging in his eyes. A lot of men had been blinded and worse in those years. He'd been lucky to escape as long as he had, except being frozen for the better part of a lifetime. He knew very well that life as a soldier was dangerous. He'd known that when he'd first tried to sign up in 1940. He'd been willing to risk life and limb then, what made him so special now? Soldiers died, soldiers were wounded, often beyond repair, and he didn't know that there was no way back, not yet anyway. He'd felt a bit better while he'd been singing.

"_When peace like a river attendeth my way,  
__When sorrows like sea billows roll,  
__Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say  
__It is well, it is well with my soul_." The guy who'd written that had just lost all four of his daughters, all still children. To keep on trusting God through that much… He kept on singing, he was pretty sure the verses were in the wrong order, and he seemed to have sung some bits twice. He'd got to the last chorus, or what he thought was the last chorus, when there was a tap on the door.

"Captain?" Was that Doctor Ryman?

"Just a second." Rogers got off the bed and walked over to the door, feeling the wall in front of him for the door frame, then the door handle. He opened the door. There was a moment's silence.

"You can sing too." That was Doctor Ryman.

"Well there's not a lot else I can do in here."

"Any other hidden talents?"

"I used to sketch. More people did that before photographs were easy." Rogers stepped back to let the doctor in, waited until he'd passed him, then closed the door again.

"Used to. You might well again, we're not giving up on you yet." Rogers drew breath slowly.

"Thank you."

"I think America owes you that much. Anyway, Nurse Grogan said your eyes were bothering you." Rogers nodded.

"They're not that bad, but…"

"And they didn't yesterday?"

"No Sir." Doctor Ryman huffed softly.

"It won't be for much longer. We're getting ready for treatment now; it'll be a quarter hour or so. We'll up the Bupivacaine dose this time around." Rogers had no idea what that meant, so just nodded.

"Nurse Grogan said that I can't eat anything at the moment."

"Well she's right. You're under general for hours every day. Why? You hungry?"

"Yeah, very." He huffed again.

"I guess that IV glucose doesn't fill you up, even if it keeps you going. I'll have a think, see what we can do. It won't be this side of the next treatment now, but we'll see what we can do." Doctor Ryman's feet moved towards the door. Rogers opened it again for him.

"Thank you."

"I'll see you in fifteen." Rogers closed the door after him, then leant his head against the door. They were pretty kind, this lot. Like almost everyone at SHIELD, they were focused on what they were there to do, they wanted to get things done, but they seemed to be genuinely interested in keeping him comfortable. Fury had set up the fake 1945 ward in an effort to spare him the shock, so maybe that wasn't so new. On the other hand, Rogers had wondered in the past if Fury had known that the game on the radio was in the wrong year and had put it on to see how quick on the uptake he was. What would Fury do if Rogers asked him outright? That might be interesting. Maybe he'd ask the next time he saw – the next time he and Fury met. Rogers turned away from the door towards the bed. He pulled the blanket back, shook the pillow out and set it down against what he judged to be the middle of the head of the bed, picked the blanket up, shook it off, then paused. This might be harder to do blind. He found a short edge and folded the blanket lengthways, picking up the other end and trying to get it square. He laid the fold down the middle of the bed and unfolded it. That should be about right. He bent down and found the free edge and ran his hand along. It got nearer the floor as it went. He grabbed the higher end and pulled it down. That was better. He leant back against the wall beside the bed. He still had a few minutes to wait.

A tap at the door.

"Captain?" Grogan's voice

"Coming." He followed the wall round to the door, but she'd opened it by the time he got there.

"Ready to go?"

"Yeah." She took his hand and guided it to her arm, then started walking. He was less wary this time, he trusted her not to walk him in to a wall. "Just a question." He started after a minute. "How am I being kept clean?"

"We've been taking care of that while you're under, though we could head towards you doing it yourself if you like."

"It can't be that difficult. Just give me water and soap and I'll figure it out." She hesitated.

"OK. I guess we can try. Turning left." They walked in near silence the rest of the way. Something was humming loudly somewhere to their left by the time the floor went rough and cold. Rogers thought nothing of it. He found the table, lay down when he was asked, then waited for the needle. He knew to expect to feel like he was floating, he knew to expect the shimmering light, the only light he'd seen for days now, he knew to expect the gathering dark.

**The songs quoted here, in order, are: The Ballad of Rodger Young, D-day Dodgers, and It is well with my soul.  
****Reviews still welcome; thank you to my two guest reviewers so far. I'm sorry I can't reply to you personally.**


	4. Darkness

Rogers crouched in the half-dark, shield over his head. The man to his right broke cover and fired for a moment, then ducked again. There were only a few hostiles left, he was pretty sure of that. He couldn't understand their words, but they sounded terrified. They had to be nearly there.

"Aus! Aus! Schnell!" The gunfire from the other side stopped. Rogers straightened slowly, warily. There were no Hydra soldiers in sight. Where had they gone? A great metal ballast stood by the far wall, stretching up and back further than he could see. The metal groaned. Something was blinking in the dark. He knew. Somehow he knew.  
"Out!" He bellowed at his men. "Run! Come on!" They trusted him enough to turn their backs on the enemy and follow him. The sound of the explosion hit them like the wall of water behind it, it knocked all the breath out of his body. His head was in air again. He gasped, then was under freezing water again. The water pushed him on. He shouted in to the tide; where were his men? They were all going to drown.

"Come on! Up!" Where were they? He couldn't see them.

"Form!" He shouted. "Form up! Come on!"

"Hold on. You're safe, Captain. It's OK." The world splintered. The new voice didn't belong. He jerked against the water, but it wasn't water. It was solid and only under him. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see. He couldn't hear any water now. The woman's voice was close at hand, he knew it, Nurse Grogan's voice. He was in hospital, blind, he'd just woken. He was safe, he was not in 1943, he was not about to drown. He was breathing hard, his heart was hammering. He rolled over on to his side.

"Captain?"

"Just give me a minute." He pressed his hands to his forehead, above the bandage, and started to slow his breathing down. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not unusual, you know, Captain. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You must have seen a lot of stuff and you've not had an easy week. Anyone would have nightmares with all that behind them." He didn't answer. He felt her sit down on the bed beside him. His mouth felt dry. He sat up. His head span. He groped for something to hold on to to steady himself. Nurse Grogan took his hands. "You're OK." He sat very still, waiting for the spinning to stop, head bowed, still breathing hard. "Do you wanna tell me what you saw?"

"Italy, 1943. I took my squad down in to a Hydra base, underground. We got most of them pretty quick, half a dozen holed themselves in pretty well so we couldn't rush them, they set a bomb and got out another way."

"Did you loose men?"

"No, by the grace of God we all made it out alive when the base collapsed. When people went back in there, they found eighteen prisoners in there, crushed to death. We'd left them to die."

"That wasn't your fault." Grogan said after a moment. Her hand was still on his shoulder. "You didn't know they were in there, right?" Rogers shook his head. "I read that Hydra often went and shot all their prisoners if they thought they were losing."

"If they had time. You had to take Hydra bases fast, before they really knew what was happening. But nearly all their bases kept prisoners, we should have been looking."

"Why? As hostages?"

"No, as guinea pigs. Nazis 'improved' people by culling, Hydra wanted faster results. They took people, often our soldiers, and changed them, experimented on them. Lots of them died, lots of them went mad." There was a long silence. Grogan put her hand back on his shoulder.

"You didn't know they were there, you didn't take them prisoner, you didn't set the bomb that killed them."

"Hydra only killed prisoners en masse like that when they were under attack. If we'd hung back, done things differently, we might have got them out alive." Grogan, drew breath slowly.

"Captain, do you think it's better to die than to live an awful life?" Rogers sighed.

"You're saying that it was better for them to die in our attack than to keep on living as Hydra prisoners." She didn't contradict him. "I don't know. You'd have to ask someone who'd been there, and I'm not sure any of them are still alive." There was a long silence.

"Captain, I wasn't there. I've never been in battle, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but if what I've read about you is right, you never desert anyone. You always did the best you could, whatever the odds, whatever danger you put yourself in. You're a brave man." She moved her hand up from his shoulder to the base of his neck and laid her other hand flat on his chest. "From what I know, I have no trouble believing you did everything you could, you always did everything you could." He wished he could see her face. There'd been a shift in the tone of her voice, this wasn't comfortable. The touch of a doctor or a nurse was usually more… purposeful than this felt. He had half a mind to pull back from her, but without being able to see her face he felt like he didn't know enough to know how to respond. The hand on his neck shifted up a little, her weight moved on the bed. She was leaning in to him, as though she was going to kiss him.

"OK, stop." He said, taking her hands in his, moving them off.

"We're both adults. If we want to, there's no reason-"

"Nurse Grogan, when were you born?"

"October 1983. Why?" Rogers shook his head.

"I'm old enough to be your grandfather. That's why, or part of it."

"Going by date of birth. You were born in 1920, frozen in 1945, you've been back on your feet for two years, if that. Physically you're only… what? Twenty seven?" Rogers drew breath slowly.

"The age I look doesn't matter. I was born a world away from you. I may not look like an old man, but I think like one, sometimes I feel like one. There's also the state I'm in right now."

"The fact that you're blind?" She gave him a moment to respond. He took too long to work out a sensible answer. "I don't care that much. First and above all, from what I can tell, you are a truly good man. You don't see many of them."

"You barely know me. I've been awake for two days, you've spent a couple of hours with me at most, I've never even seen you." She picked up his hand and laid it on the side of her face.

"How do blind men see?" Her skin was smooth and full, a bit cooler than his hand was. He pulled his hand out of hers and shook his head.

"OK, I'm flattered, but… I can't do this right now." She sighed.

"OK." There was another, very long, silence. When she spoke again, her tone was much more normal. "How are you feeling in general? Are your eyes hurting you?" But she was talking fast.

"They're fine, my head was spinning for a bit, but it's stopped now."

"Can you stand up?" She got off the bed, Rogers shifted round and got to his feet. He drew breath sharply. His head was spinning sickeningly fast. He could feel himself swaying. He braced his legs and felt Grogan take his hand. "Not easily, sit back down." He did, dropping his head between his knees. Grogan's hand appeared on his wrist, feeling for a pulse. "That's quite fast. I need to feel the inside of your lip." She did. Her hands were purposeful again. "You're quite dehydrated, that's probably why you don't feel great. I'll go and get you water. Get back in to bed."

Rogers heard the door open and close again. He found the edge of the blanket, turned round and pulled it over his legs. He blew out slowly. He really hadn't expected that. It wasn't as though it had never happened before, there had been that time during the war with that woman, when Peggy had chosen the worst possible moment to walk in. He'd been quietly annoyed with that woman for messing things up between him and Peggy for months. If she hadn't made a pass at him, or if he'd just been firmer in saying no, maybe he and Peggy might have managed to go out once at least. Grogan had taken no for an answer at least. Grogan. He didn't even know her first name. This was ridiculous. There wasn't a way for him to be in a relationship with a woman that wasn't ridiculous. If they weren't young enough to be his granddaughter, they'd already lived most of their lives. He had the date of birth of a ninety year old and the life experience of a thirty year old or less, but it was experience unlike any thirty year old on the planet now.

The door opened. Rogers turned his head pointlessly.

"OK, water." The door closed again. Grogan's footsteps came closer. He held out a hand. She put a cup in it. "Sorry, no straw."

"I'll manage." He lifted the cup to his mouth and drained it. She took it from him, he heard her refill it before she handed it back.

"Don't keep drinking that fast. You won't hold the water if you do." She was behaving as though the last twenty minutes, or however long it had been, hadn't happened. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing. He took one mouthful of water, then lowered the cup. "You said you were hungry yesterday. Are you still?"

"Yeah." He hadn't realized until she said it.

"OK, well I know it isn't much, but there's a few biscuits here for you. They should just take the edge off. It's the IV stuff that's actually keeping you going." He nodded.

"Thanks. Can you just put them down next to this bed leg or something?" He tapped the bedframe.

"Sure." He took another gulp of water. He felt the foot of the bed sink on one side. She'd sat down. He tensed slightly. "Look, Captain, about what happened before… I'm sorry. It wasn't appropriate for me to behave like that, you're my patient, I should be… professional towards you and nothing else. I know I made you uncomfortable and I'm sorry. I just though… I don't know what I thought."

"It's OK." He said, and he did mean it. "It can be hard enough to figure out what people mean when everyone's… working fine, and you did stop when I asked you to." Albeit the second time he'd asked.

"I haven't had that much to do with… blind people before. I've been with SHIELD pretty much since school. Lots of blunt trauma, lots of burns, lots of gunshot wounds, a couple of lightening strikes… not much like this. I guess I forgot how important seeing is to talking." Rogers sighed.

"Yeah."

"I guess this happens to you a lot, huh?"

"What? This?" He gestured at his eyes.

"No, like… Girls… you…"

"Oh, that. No. Not a lot."

"Really?" He shook his head.

"It has… happened, but not a lot."

"Really? You're kind of gorgeous." He had no idea what to say to that, he could feel himself reddening. "Ah, I'm sorry." She stood up. "I've made this really awkward now. I'm just gonna go." She topped his water up, then left him alone. He blew out and shook his head slowly. That had been…odd. He definitely didn't' regret pushing her away. He wasn't in a position to do that right now, even without being blind. And given that she'd made quite an obvious pass at him so quickly, she probably played by very different rules to him. Everyone did now.

**Reviews still very welcome**


	5. Let

Rogers ate as slowly as he could, it still wasn't much, then tried to get up again. The world didn't spin. Good. He put the half-cup of water he'd saved under the bed. He'd want it later. There was something wet on his lower eyelids. He blinked. It didn't hurt, and his eyes didn't sting today. He was OK. He knelt down beside the bed.

"God, thank you that I can get up and walk now, thank you that I'm not in pain. Thank you that I don't have to worry about food and shelter even though I couldn't provide for myself." He paused. "God, if I did wrong with Grogan, I'm sorry. Show me, so I can not do it again. Let me honour you above all else and fear nothing." Nothing. Not even a life in total darkness, seeing through a cane, being led everywhere, unable to fend for himself. "You said you want us to be persistent in prayer, so I'm asking again; God, I want to see. I know you have the power to heal me, just like that or through the doctors. I don't know what use I am blind." He sighed. "Whatever you do with me, don't let me hate you for it. Let me remember that you always work for my good, even if it doesn't feel that way. In Jesus's Holy name, Amen."

He got up, knotted the string, third "day" awake now. He lifted a hand to the bottom edge of the bandage. It was damp, like the skin around his eyes. What was it? Were his eyes bleeding? There was nothing he could do about it right now. Someone would be back soon enough. He started pacing the room. This pacing wasn't aimless. His strides were long and fast, his breathing was measured against them. He gave it three laps each way, then started running, using the bed to mark laps, he couldn't really miss it, if he didn't jump it, he'd run in to it. Ten laps each way, then he started putting drills in, like he had yesterday.

Rogers had been going long enough that he was breathing hard when someone knocked at the door.

"Coming." He jogged over to the nearest corner and felt along the wall for the door handle.

"Hey." Grogan's voice.

"Hey." He stepped back to let her pass him.

"You're breathing hard, what've you been doing in here?" She started speaking again before he could answer. "No, none of my business. Sorry. Why do I keep putting my foot in it today?" She walked over to the far side of the room, opposite the bed. Rogers laughed quietly.

"Working out. Nothing to hide." He heard her put something down.

"You're in hospital, three days ago you had life-threatening meningitis, and you're working out." He shrugged.

"There's not a lot else I can do. Just, while you're here, can you take a look at my eyes?" She hesitated. "Under them feels wet, I can't tell what the fluid is."

"Sit down. I can't reach you standing up." He did. He felt her hand at the lowest edge of the bandage. "Well it isn't blood." She sniffed. "I don't know what it is, it might be tears, it might be lymph. Neither of those things is necessarily worrying, I'd say tears would be a good sign. Either way, don't worry about it. Anyway, I brought you water so you can wash yourself a bit. You need to keep your eyes dry, so that limited our options a bit. Let me show you." She took his arm, led him a few paces, then crouched down. She took his hand in hers and led him to a bowl of water, a bar of soap, a towel and scrubs to change in to. "We thought you might be a bit more comfortable in those than the gown." Then she left him to it. Rogers stayed still for a moment, crouching in front of the bowl. The thing would be to remember where he'd put things down. He reached forward for the soap and put it just to the right of the bowl, the towel was on the left, and that would be harder to loose. The water was hot to the touch, almost uncomfortably hot, but it was OK, it would cool down. He tried not to spill too much water on the floor, that was harder when he couldn't see. He was crouching in a puddle by the time he was done. Could he mop the worst of it up with the gown? He'd changed in to scrubs, he didn't need the gown right now. He tucked the bowl of water in to a corner, the soap behind it and hung the towel and the gown over the screen. He suspected it wouldn't pass inspection in barracks, but he couldn't do much better right now.

Rogers wandered back towards the bed, but he didn't want to sit down. He felt like he'd run enough, it had probably been two hours or more, but he didn't want to be still either. A tremor ran up his body. He wasn't cold. There wasn't a lot he could do, blind and confined to this room. He scuffed at the floor irritably and started pacing again. This time it did feel aimless. This time it felt like doing something boring to make himself less bored. He was stuck here, on his own with nothing to do and no eyes. He found the bed and sat down, then got up again. Maybe he could do more physically. He set off again at a jog, clockwise, minding he didn't put his foot in the water. But actually, it seemed, he was tired, even if his head didn't feel that way. He was breathing hard quickly and he didn't have it in him to train hard right now. Healing from an injury was tiring. He hoped that was it. Maybe he'd sleep. It would probably do him good if he could. He drained the water he had left, then got back in to bed and settled himself.

Rogers lost track of time again. His eyes were still running, he wasn't in pain at least, but he couldn't sleep. He couldn't summon the energy to do anything either. Maybe that was because he had nothing to do. Singing had given him something to do yesterday, that didn't take much effort. He sat up again. He hummed a few lines for the time it took him to work out what he was humming. It seemed to be a bit of Jimmy crack corn and I don't care, but he wasn't entirely sure. He sang through a few verses, probably in the wrong order, then ran out of words.

"_As the deer pants for the water so my soul longs after thee,  
__You alone are my heart's desire and I long to worship thee_," He'd learned this one recently, it was one of the few new ones he actively liked. It was useful to him, self-reliance was something he had to watch, well, most of the time, he wasn't leaning that way so much right now.  
"_You alone are my strength, my shield,  
__To you alone may my spirit yield_," He kept on for what felt like a long time. His voice warmed up gradually, holding notes got easier, the top ends of phrases got easier, then his voice tired and started cracking. He was calmer now. That horrible restlessness had gone. Someone tapped on the door.

"Captain?" Grogan. He got up.

"Coming." He opened the door to her.

"They're ready for you."

"OK." He held out an arm for her. She didn't take it at once.

"Did you hang your stuff up to dry?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Nothing, it's just…" He could hear her smiling. "It's nice of you. Most people wouldn't bother." She took his arm and started to lead him.

"You know," Rogers started after a minute. "you know a lot more about me than I do about you. Where are you from? How did you wind up here?" He felt her arm move as though she'd shrugged.

"There's not a lot to tell really, I was born in Norwich, Connecticut, spent most of my childhood there, Mum was a physio, Dad was a lab tech, they met at work, stayed at the same hospital for about thirty years, I went to school in state, couldn't afford not to. I got a job in Detroit of all places after I graduated. I guess that's where I started to get interested in fixing what people do to other people on purpose, not what just happens when people get old or don't take care of themselves. After a couple of years I got sick of dishing out antibiotics and aspirin all day, so I started looking for work in the military. There wasn't much out there, but SHIELD was offering, so I applied."

"You must have seen some stuff most medics never see." She laughed quietly.

"Yeah, we had a concussion epidemic once, in New Mexico, there were a dozen guys who'd had their lights punched out by a blond, bearded brute who'd been chasing something so classified even the really concussed ones didn't dare tell me anything."

"That wouldn't have been spring 2011, would it?"

"How did you guess that?"

"I think I know what that was about, that's all."

"And you're not going to tell me."

"You can't show me the clearance level on your ID, so no." She laughed.

"Typical SHIELD."

"Captain. Good morning." Doctor Ryman's voice. This was morning. That made sense, those who can actually tell what time of day it is stay awake during the day, he spent the day out of it.

"Good morning."

"Nurse Grogan told me that your eyes have been wet. Have they been bothering you with that?"

"They don't hurt, they don't itch."

"That's good. If your lacrimal apparatus is working, that could be a very good sign. Lay down, we'll put you under and have a look." Nurse Grogan started to lead him towards the table.

"Would it be more use with me awake?"

"Maybe, but either way, we're not going there."

"Do you want to just… see if I can take it?"

"No, Captain." Ryman said firmly. Rogers got on to the table. "If you won't give up on a conscious exam for your own sake, do it for mine, for ours. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it's an awful thing to see a grown man screaming in pain." Rogers dipped his head. He didn't need telling that.

"You still think it would be that bad."

"Until I have reason to think otherwise, yes." He sighed.

"It's your call." He lay down, quiet and obedient. He couldn't really be anything else. He waited for the needle and the blackness that would follow.

**Reviews and/or predictions very welcome.**


	6. Me

He was awake. He was lying down, in a bed, in total darkness. No alarms, no voices. A bird called somewhere, but that was all. Rogers shifted and lay still again. It hadn't been a dream that had woken him. He'd woken on his own. That was nice. It wasn't dark in here, or not that he knew about anyway. He was blind. He rolled on to his side and curled his head forwards. He was going to have to get used to this. This was life now, total darkness, being led everywhere. He didn't know that yet. He didn't know he was beyond help. If it had been tears yesterday making his eyes wet, they'd said that was a good sign. Experimentally, he tried to move his closed eyes, to see if they were wet. But something was holding them. His eyelids wouldn't move properly, there was something on them. It wasn't water today, whatever this was was half way solid. They didn't hurt though. Rogers sat up. His head span, so he went no further. He didn't feel right. He couldn't exactly say what, but all of him felt… strange, as though it wasn't quite working properly. He shivered. He wasn't cold. His head had settled, so he pulled the pillow up behind him and shuffled back to lean against the headboard. He leant forwards and put his head in his hands. He didn't like being left alone this much, but he felt awkward in anyone's company, he didn't really know how to behave anymore. The only person likely to come in here was Grogan, spending time with her hadn't got any easier since yesterday. He sighed. He wanted to like Grogan, she hadn't meant any harm, she seemed a nice girl from what he could tell, which wasn't much. She'd just overstepped a mark yesterday and she had taken no for an answer.

String under the bed. He should do that. Tentatively, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Rogers stood up and grimaced at once. It felt like a plug had been pulled inside his head. He dropped to his knees quickly and let himself fall to all fours. He felt blood rush back in to his head. He shivered. He crawled forwards and found the string. He was alright. He would be alright. He placed the fourth knot just below the other three. Four days of treatment, plus the three days before he'd woken up. He was a week on from the injury, and still nobody knew if he would ever see again. He put the string back. That wasn't under his control. He knelt up again, grasping the edge of the bed to stop himself swaying, then leant against it, hands clasped, head bowed. He had no idea what to pray.

"God, show me how to pray." He said quietly. He knelt there for what felt like a good few minutes before he started to pray properly. He felt like he didn't have a lot to thank God for right now, but a part of him still knew that wasn't fair. He'd not been abandoned as useless, though there was a good chance that that was what he was, he wasn't in pain as such, he had shelter, food and water… He had a lot more than some people.

Rogers got up again slowly. He still felt pretty bad, he would have started moving around, but he didn't feel like he'd make it ten paces right now. He sat back down on the bed, breathing harder than he should have been, shivering. Why though? He wasn't cold, he wasn't scared. His chances of working it out on his own weren't great, there wasn't much point in trying. Should he try to remember the fight? Maybe he'd be able to now, and-

"Captain?" Grogan knocked.

"Come in." The door opened, but didn't close.

"Are you OK?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You didn't come to the door, you're sitting down and you're pale. You're not right, are you?"

"Apart from the eyes?" She didn't answer for a second. He shook his head. "I feel like I did yesterday." She closed the door.

"Stay there." Rogers heard her walk over, then felt her hand on his wrist, looking for his pulse, then her hand appeared in the corner of his mouth. "I did tell them you needed more fluids, but…" She tailed off. "Same issue." One hand stayed on his jawline, the other went back to his hand. "Oh, hold on."

"What?"

"Your hand's much colder than your head. There's nothing else, is there?"

"Does it feel colder in here to you?"

"Why?" He drew a breath slowly.

"I keep shivering." He heard her draw breath.

"OK, I'm going to get water, and a doctor. This might be nothing or it might be bad." The door opened and closed again. He drew his knees up. This was not in his hands. God knew what he was doing. He had to trust in that. He didn't wait long before Grogan came back, Ryman with her. Ryman started doing exactly what Grogan had just done, with bigger, rougher hands.

"You've been dizzy since you woke up?"

"Every time I move."

"Tachycardic, vasoconstricted," Ryman muttered, apparently to himself. He ran a hand along the underside of Rogers's jaw on each side. "OK, that's something. It's not the meningitis back." He stepped back. "I don't know. I don't know what this is, I am pretty sure it isn't going to do you serious harm any time soon, so I'm inclined to leave it for now, it's half eleven and I want some sleep. I'm not mad at you for waking me up, just I'll be happy to get back to bed."

"Can he still have food and water?"

"Oh yes, definitely the water, but only eat if you want to. Go and get a pink tube, stick two drops of EDTA in it and a yellow tube." The door opened and closed.

"Here." Ryman's voice. Rogers turned his head, was that what he was supposed to do? "Water." Ah. He held a hand out. Ryman put the cup in it. Rogers drank. "You need that." Was that a question or a statement? He nodded. A shiver ran up his back. Ryman took the cup and refilled it.

"Do you have any idea yet how likely I am to…" He couldn't finish the question.

"I'm sorry, Captain. Really, I am, I know this must be hard for you, but we just don't know. Your eyes are trying to repair themselves, we knew that at the outset, we just don't know what kind of a job they'll do." Rogers dropped his head. "I couldn't have given you worse than that, could I?" Rogers sighed.

"I guess it's still better than knowing I'm going to be blind forever." Ryman took the empty cup and refilled it again. After a long pause, Grogan came back in. She and Ryman drew blood from him silently, then the door opened and closed again.

"Do you want food?" Grogan asked. Rogers nodded. "OK. Two minutes."

She came back, but this time she stayed with him while he ate, re-telling what she remembered from what the dozen or so concussed men had told her about what had happened to them in 2011 in New Mexico. She could see that it was making him laugh, he knew what joined up these concussed ramblings about a lion-man and a 'guy out of Braveheart'.

"You still won't tell me what the hell actually happened in there?"

"Not until you show me your clearance."

"No fair. Even if I put my clearance papers right under your nose, you wouldn't…" She stopped abruptly.

"Well fix that, show me you're clearance level four or over and I'll tell you what you're allowed to know." He'd set that up hoping she'd walk in to it.

"So even within people who are allowed to know there are levels?"

"Yes. It wouldn't be SHIELD if it wasn't over complicated and paranoid. You must have seen other stuff than that."

"Probably nothing else you'll find as funny, nothing else I've found as funny. For all that SHIELD's agents run around with some of the most powerful forces we know about, we still mostly see sprained ankles and coughs. It's the exception rather than the rule when we get, oh, hang on. You might get this one quicker than I did. I joined SHIELD in late 2010, and when you join SHIELD, people mess with you, they see what they can make you believe. I was told a load of stupid stuff to start with, like a lab blowing up and making a whole town go psycho, and an alien transporting a woman to another dimension and getting her pregnant then sending her back so she gave birth to him here,"

"What?"

"I know. I still can't believe I bought that one. Anyway, after a few months, I started to wise up a bit, then one day, a senior nurse came in and said they'd found an aircraft sunk in the arctic, frozen solid, bodies on board and they were trying to revive one of them and I was like 'yeah, right, pull the other one'." Rogers nodded and smiled.

"I think I know where this is going."

"Yeah, then she said 'no really, there's a major war hero there frozen solid, but alive, they're trying to revive him'. I just laughed at her and repeated some of the crazy stuff she'd told me before, then she was like 'no, seriously, we've got Captain America alive'. And I thought this was so funny, like a guy from seventy years ago that my dad used to collect cards of when he was about ten, then two days later an official memo went out saying you had been retrieved and were alive enough to be comatose. I've never read anything that seemed so happy about that." Rogers smirked.

"It's a step up from dead."

"Yeah, I guess. If you can come back from that…" She tailed off. "I guess you can come back from anything." There was a bang on the door. Rogers jumped.

"Nurse Grogan?" Doctor Michael's voice.

"Yeah?"

Grogan left him alone again, sitting in the dark, feeling better, but not well. He'd done the string, he started to train but couldn't go on for long, he lost his breath quickly and his head started spinning. Rogers hadn't been given water to wash today, he could smell himself, and he didn't smell normal. He smelt of sweat, but not the sweat he worked up by running or fighting, he smelt ill. Was the chemical weapon coming back, was it going to kill him anyway? The thought scared him, but not as much as it might have. If it was die or live blind, there wasn't a lot in it. He had no reason to fear death, he believed Jesus would raise him, he honestly did, but something in him rebelled against the idea of letting go, of giving up. The same thing that had pulled him back from the ice. The doctors would probably drug him enough that dying wouldn't actually hurt, but he'd probably be able to feel his body giving up, so much later than it should have done. Any normal human would have been killed by the freezing. He should have died then, but his body had refused to give up, it had kept him alive to see everyone he'd ever cared about dead or dying slowly. If it was time for him to go, who was he to argue?

Grogan came back for him later on and led him away for treatment. He was steady enough on his feet by then. There was something up between Ryman and the other doctors, they were hiding something in their voices, they knew more than they were letting on.

"You've given us quite a puzzle, Captain." Ryman said when he asked if they knew why he was suddenly sick. "It's not the meningitis, you're talking sense to us and you're not in pain, and you don't have the white cell spike, but something's messed with you, hopefully by the time you wake up, we'll have the answer." It wasn't that simple. Rogers knew it even as he let them put him out. They knew something, something important that they didn't want to tell him.

Beyond the perimeter fence, something moved closer in the half-dark, unseen.

**Reviews welcome, and two questions:  
What was the concussion epidemic involving a blond brute in 2011?  
****What's unseen in the dark?**


	7. Sow

Rogers gasped awake. He rolled over. If a dream had woken him, he couldn't remember it now. His heart was racing, so it was probably better that he couldn't remember. It probably hadn't been good. He lay still, letting his heart settle. He didn't have to get up, he didn't have to work, there was no work he could do, he was blind. He shivered. He didn't try to move, he didn't try to think, he let himself slip back towards sleep.

He was riding fast along a road in the desert, he hadn't seen another human or evidence of one for miles. The sun was beating down, he had a long way to go, but he wasn't really hurrying. Something on the skyline caught his eye, something dark, rising. Smoke. A column of smoke was rising somewhere ahead. What was burning? He sped up. Someone might need help. Something lay down off the side of the road, belching black smoke, a man ran up towards the road as he approached, waving to flag him down. He took the gas off and slowed down. That man was asking for help.

Bang! Rogers sat up, his head span.  
"Abe, you gonna be the one to pick that up." A man's voice, he didn't sound happy.

"You saw that, didn't y'all?"

"What?"

"Something moved up there."

"It was a bird or your own stupid brain. Quit making excuses, pick that up." A man in the corridor had spooked at something and dropped something heavy. That explained the bang. Rogers sighed. His heart was racing again, but his head had settled. He shivered.

What had he just seen? A dream? He couldn't place it if it was a memory, but it didn't feel like a dream, but they often didn't, which was why they could be so terrifying. That… whatever it was felt recent. Which made sense if he'd just dreamed it. Did it really matter? Hang on, maybe it did. The last thing he remembered before he'd woken up here had been setting off from the training camp he'd been at for a month, in the desert, on his motorbike. Maybe it had been that. Maybe if not for the clumsy guy in the corridor, he might have remembered what had happened to him, he might have remembered how he'd lost Barton, how Barton had managed to get anywhere near the main fighting. He owed it to any man he lost to try to understand why and how they'd been killed, for the sake of anyone else he ever commanded, though that felt unlikely to ever happen now. He got out of bed, he stood up more easily than he had yesterday, but he was still glad to kneel down again to tie the fifth knot in the piece of string. Eight days in total then. And still no one he knew wanted to talk to him. Rogers shivered. Had they found Romanova yet? If she didn't want to be found, probably not. It would be good to hear her voice, or Fury's, just someone he could recognise. It might force him to accept that this was actually happening to him, he was actually blind and he was going to have to learn to live with it. Unless they got his sight back. If they knew how likely he was to see again, they weren't telling him. He shuffled round to lean against the bed, clasping his hands. It was unusual for him to be left this long once he was awake. Anyway.

"Lord Jesus, thank you that I still have food and shelter, and people to look after me, and that I don't feel so bad today. Thank you for not letting me give up on life until you say I'm done, just… God, I don't know what to do right now. I don't know what you want me to do. Show me." He took a long breath. "And God, I want to see." It was scary to pray that, because every day he prayed it and woke up blind he felt abandoned. Every day, it was hard to trust that God knew what he was doing. He felt like there was more he should pray, but he couldn't think of it. He wanted to get up and move, but where on earth was he going?  
"_As I went down in the river to pray,  
__Studying about that good old way,  
__And who shall wear the robe and crown  
__Good Lord, show me the way_." He went through four or five verses; brothers, sisters, sinners, whatever he could think of, keeping his voice as steady as he could through the shivers. He only stopped when someone knocked on the door.

"Come in." Rogers got to his feet as the door opened. His head span, but it was bearable.

"Thought you were probably up." Grogan's voice. "How long have you been awake?" He shook his head.

"I have no idea."

"How are you doing?"

"Better than yesterday I think."

"How so?"

"I'm not as dizzy." He stepped round the foot of the bed towards her.

"Figures. You could barely get up yesterday. You said not _as_ dizzy. Headache?" She stepped closer to him and took him by the wrist for a pulse.

"A little. It feels like water would help."

"I'll get you some in a minute. If I'd had any sense I'd have brought it, I didn't get a lot of sleep."

"Why was that?"

"One of the guys on guard duty had a seizure. They roped a few off-duty medics to deal with him, we think he's OK, he's under observation now. Are you still shivery?" He nodded. "Anything else?"

"Not really."

"OK, I'll go get water." She left. Rogers didn't want to sit down, he started pacing the perimeter of the room, though it didn't improve his headache. He'd just got the confidence to start running when the door opened again.

"Hey." Still Grogan. He walked towards her, wary of walking in to her. She put a cup in his hand.

"Thanks." He sat down on the edge of the bed, he felt her weight further along the bed a moment later.

"Can I check a rumour with you?"

"Depends."

"OK, someone said that the Hulk, Banner, killed his wife. I just… I couldn't get that out of my head." Rogers shook his head.

"Not that I know of, I don't think he's ever been married."  
"Is he… is he dangerous?" It took Rogers a moment to come up with a sensible answer.

"As soon as anything is strong, it's dangerous. All the Avengers are dangerous, we're meant to be. The difference with Banner is that he's more likely to kill you by accident."

"There were, what? Six of you in the Avengers, and you were an army."

"Four of us now, five if you still count me." Barton was dead.

"Two super soldiers from opposite sides of the cold war, a perfect archer, a literal knight in shining armour, the Hulk and a Norse god." Rogers shook his head.

"He is not a god. I will give you that he's powerful, he's powerful in ways I can't even begin to understand, but he is not a god."

"Didn't he have a thing with a human woman?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"Around."

"I know there are humans he cares about, that he wants to keep safe."

"Who?"

"Scientists I think."

"What sort of scientists? Physicists?"

"I don't know. People he met who were kind to him when he got stranded here."

"Was one of them a guy called Erik Selvig?"

"Not that I know of. Maybe. Was he one of the guys Loki got control of?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. The name sounds kind of familiar."

"What about Stark?"

"What?"

"He has a girlfriend, doesn't he? A bunch of nurses were upset about that."

"Yeah, Stark has a girlfriend."

"One of them said she had him wrapped around her little finger," Rogers laughed. "that he'd do anything for her."

"I don't know about 'anything', but Coulson said we had her to thank for Stark agreeing to help us with Loki."

"So she has a lot of sway with him." Something beeped loudly, something near Grogan. He felt her weight shift. "Oh." She jumped up. "I need to go and deal with this."

"What?"

"The guy who had a seizure, it could be nothing, or it could be very bad. You're OK here." She hurried out. 'You're OK here'. What had she meant by that? It hadn't been a question. Where else would he be? Or more to the point, where else would he be and not be OK? In fairness, she'd said she was tired, she wasn't herself today. She'd been pretty nosy about Stark and the others just then. Rogers got to his feet and started pacing again, in the opposite direction.

,

He'd been running maybe ten minutes, he was warm and tiring faster than he'd have liked, when the door opened without warning. He started.

"Ah, Captain? You need to come with us." This was not a voice he knew. He turned to face the speaker, a man, southern sounding, probably about forty.

"Why?" Rogers asked. "Where are we going?"

"The perimeter may have been breached Sir. We need to get you to a safer location."

"When did this happen, the breach?" Rogers took a few paces towards the speaker.

"I don't know. Why?"

"Have you got the men to seal the perimeter again and flush inwards?"

"I don't know, Sir. There are people taking care of it. You just need to come with us." Rogers hesitated. He felt a man's hand on his shoulder. "Come on. We need to get you out of here." There were two of them, one in front of him, one at his shoulder, leading him, and he could hear another man breathing to the left, so three of them. He crossed the threshold and heard the door close behind him. The hand on his shoulder changed to a vice grip on his upper arm. Something in him wanted to pull away. Something here felt wrong.

A muffled, crackly hiss. A silenced gunshot. The thud of something heavy, about as heavy as a man, falling to the ground. Rogers started and turned to look for cover, forgetting for a heartbeat that he couldn't see. Time slowed down. Two gasps, shock not pain. Whoever had been shot hadn't cried out. They were dead, they had to be. He couldn't get to cover if he couldn't see it. Another shot, one of the men close by him gave what might have been the start of a shout for help or a bellowed order, but cut off. Someone else hit the floor. Rogers threw himself down and covered his head with his arms. Someone was attacking a SHIELD base, the perimeter had been breached and the intruder was picking people off. As Rogers hit the ground, the last man alive in his guard started to bellow a curse, but that too was cut short in his throat. Rogers felt a limp, warm arm fall across him as the man fell down. He was alone and blind under enemy fire.  
"Help me." He thought, heart hammering, trying to keep his breathing shallow enough that he might look dead from a distance. "God, help me." He hadn't been shot yet. The first three shots had been a second apart each, if that. The gunman either wanted him alive or thought he was dead. Light footsteps maybe ten paces away. The gunman. He was about to find out which.

The dead arm was pulled off his back.

**First cliffhanger of the fic.**

**A couple of questions: Who's the gunman?  
My chapter names almost always have a pattern of some sort. What is it?**


	8. Light

Light footsteps maybe ten paces away. The gunman. He was about to find out which.

The dead arm was pulled off his back.

"Rogers." He knew that voice.

"Romanoff?"

"Yeah. Come on. We're out of here." She took his hand as though to help him up.

"Wait, what? What the hell is going on?" She pulled him up

"What?"

"You just killed three agents of SHIELD. What the hell is going on?" There was a long pause.

"OK, we have catching up to do, we need to get out of sight. Take that thing off your eyes and follow me." She didn't know. But she'd been there. She'd been there when he'd been wounded.

"I'm blind, Romanoff." Another long pause. She swore quietly.

"We still need to get out of sight. Come on." She took him by the arm and led him four or five paces on. "Crouch." He did. "Feel forward, there's a ventilation shaft, three feet by three. Get in to it." Cold metal met his hands. He advanced on his hands and knees. "Turn right in a sec." He did. He heard Romanoff shuffling around behind him, hissing with effort, then a grating sound. What was going on? Romanoff had just shot those three guys dead, either they were the perimeter breach pretending to be guards or Romanoff had gone rogue. If she had gone rogue, he would probably pay with his life for trusting her. He didn't have a lot of choice. He'd always taken her down without too much trouble in training, but in training he'd had his eyes. "Feel to your right." There was a hole. "The shaft turns up for about ten feet. Climb up, then come out to the left. You shouldn't need to see to do that." Rogers wedged himself against the sides of the shaft and climbed. He could do this. One wall disappeared. He hauled himself through in to another shaft, sloping upwards, away. He moved up it a few feet to give Romanoff space to follow him. Whatever her intentions were, he had no hope against her blind. He heard her breathing coming closer, then heard her hands and feet on the metal close at hand.  
"Twenty feet up here, then we're out. Stay quiet." She brushed past him. Rogers followed her, hoping she knew what she was doing. The metal changed to chipboard and levelled off. "Stand up. There's space." Cautiously, he did. Romanoff reappeared at his elbow and led him ten or so paces through the darkness, then sat down, pulling him with her. "Let's have a look at your eyes." Her hand appeared on the bandage. He recoiled and pushed her back.

"No. You can't. I was blinded by a chemical weapon, you can't touch my eyes."  
"What?"  
"You were there. Eight days ago, Loki's aliens had a chemical weapon. They killed Barton and blinded me."

"Rogers, Barton isn't dead. I spoke to him three days back. He's fine." Rogers froze. Either Romanoff had gone rogue and was playing a very strange game or Barton hadn't been killed. If Barton hadn't been killed, how much of what Grogan had told him had been lies? His eyes had been bandaged for days, was he really blind? "There was no alien attack eight days ago. Eight days ago, you disappeared from the road." So was this all a set-up? Who were these people who'd been looking after him for days? Why were they holding him? He was a super soldier. People had been trying for a lifetime to replicate Erskine's success, SHIELD had tried to work it out. He'd been knocked out every day for procedures he knew nothing about. Romanoff's story made at least some sense. "Will you let me look at your eyes?" Slowly, Rogers lowered his arm. This might be unbearably painful, but if Romanoff was telling the truth, he might not be blind. To find that out, he'd risk almost anything. He felt her hand on the side of his head. He felt sick. Either he was about to double over in agony or he was about to see again. He could feel the tension moving round his head as Romanoff undid the bandage. His breathing was quickening. "There's thick black cloth in this." She said quietly. The gentle pressure of the bandage fell away. Rogers lifted a hand towards his eyes and drew breath sharply. "What?" He passed his hand in front of his eyes.

"I see shadow." He wasn't completely blind. He tried to open his eyes. Something held them shut, that thick, solid gunk that had been there yesterday.

"Let me see." Romanoff tilted his head. "There's something… on your eyes."

"I know. I can feel it. They said it was discharge."

"It looks like… almost like candle wax. I'll be as gentle as I can." He felt her fingertips on his eyelid. The stuff pulled at his eyelids as she eased it off, but there was still no pain. She brushed the last of it off. "Can you open that eye?" He tried and recoiled from the stab of light. He'd seen. He could see. He wasn't blind. Rogers lowered his hand. Romanoff was kneeling opposite him, staring at him, the flame red of her hair, just about identifiable in the half-light creeping up through cracks in the floor. He could see. "You can see, can't you." She said, smiling. He nodded. "That makes things easier." He looked around. They were inside a roof, grey dust covered everything, including his scrubs, Romanoff was filthy.

"How long have you been up here?"

"I've been in the facility coming up for 24 hours, up here, maybe ten. I could see your door, I saw them put you in unconscious, I knew this would be easier if you could run, so I waited. Are you going to do the other eye?" He lifted a hand and felt the stuff on his eyelid. It did feel like wax, Romaonoff was right. He pulled at the edge of it and it came away. That eye didn't hurt as much when he first opened it. And it worked. He could see. His eyes had adjusted to the light now. He was fully sighted in both eyes. He could see. Romanoff was still staring straight at him. She smiled.

"So what now? Go back down and figure out what they were after?" Romanoff shook her head.

"My guess is thirty-five guards here, maybe more. I don't even have enough bullets. With just the two of us, it's too dangerous, and Fury said I'm to consider you compromised until you've been cleared. We're getting out of here, now." She got up. Rogers followed her.

"How long have we got until they're on to us?"

"Not long. Your eyes slowed us down." It was dark outside. "It's four AM, the night guards are all half-asleep, when they realise they're three men down, we're in trouble, when they find the bodies, we need to run."

"What did you do with the bodies?"

"They're in the shaft. It's not a great hiding place, but I couldn't think of a better one. She pulled herself through a gap in the roof and out in to the night air. Rogers followed her. As soon as he stopped moving, even for a second, he started shivering. His scrubs didn't do much for keeping him warm, but he wasn't cold.

"Where are we?" He asked Romanoff as they started to work their way down.

"Mexico." She whispered. "State of Chihuahua, 60 clicks out of the city. We've got a way to go north before SHIELD can pick us up. They don't wanna run in Mexican airspace if they don't have to."

"So what's your plan?"

"Can you run?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Look down there. Two jeeps ready to go. We sneak up along the fuel line there, prop a nail against the second one's tyre, jump in the first one and drive, ditch the jeep about four clicks south of the border, run that and meet up with SHIELD. We should be able to keep ahead of them." Rogers nodded. He followed her down the side of the building, from ledge to ledge, jumping through the pre-dawn. They got to the ground. Romanoff pulled him in to the shadow of a crate, waiting for a foot patrol to wander past. Then they ran at a crouch to the fuel tanker. Romanoff crawled under it, Rogers followed her. Torch beams swept the ground ahead of them. This felt so dangerous. He didn't have a better idea. She was right. Fighting their way out was not an option. There seemed to be a pattern to the torch beams, and Romanoff seemed to know it, she was counting under her breath. Then suddenly she pulled him forwards by the wrist, sprinting twenty yards to the second jeep, then stopping so suddenly he ran in to her and almost knocked her over. She dropped her backpack off her shoulder and pulled out two metal things, each made of four long spikes, welded together at their base in a pyramid, and handed them to him.

"One in front of each front tyre." She breathed. He dropped to a crouch and laid the spikes, pressed right under the tyres. As soon as the jeep moved an inch forward, they'd puncture its tyres, but how long would that take to actually stop the jeep? Romanoff had crept up beside the front jeep and opened the driver's door. She must have the keys. He slunk up the other side and opened the door as gently as he could, it still clunked. Romanoff was adjusting the mirrors, she hadn't latched her door, so he didn't either. She turned her head and grinned at him. "Ready?"

"Yeah." He felt very ready to fight, his heart and his breathing were quicker. His head was still spinning. Everything he'd been told, everything he'd believed for the past five days had been lies. He hadn't lost Barton in combat, he'd never been blind. Romanoff turned the key in the ignition. The jeep started. They had seconds. Romanoff slammed her foot on the accelerator, the jeep lurched forwards, picking up speed as it neared the guard towers. Of course. That was why Romanoff had lain spikes for the other truck rather than just slashing the tyres, she was banking on it getting stuck in this narrow bit so they couldn't get anything else past it. A shot went off, then a burst of gunfire. Rogers ducked instinctively. Romanoff hissed and leant forwards. They were out. Romanoff wheeled the jeep right sharply and kept on as fast as she could go. The shots stopped. They were out of range. Rogers looked back. He couldn't see pursuit.

"How long before they have a car out after us?" He asked.

"I give them five minutes? Ten if we're lucky."

"So if we're doing the last few clicks on foot-"

"I have a plan, Rogers. They'll lose us, they've lost the visual on us now, so they have to track. There's a radio in the bag, outside pocket. Can you pass it to me?" He picked the bag up from between them and felt for the radio. The sky was lightening to their right, the sun would be up soon. There was something else in that part of the bag, he pushed past it and found the radio. Romanoff held out her hand for it.

"Red Glass to Gulliver, over." It took Gulliver a moment to respond.

"Hear you Red Glass, what's your status."

"Objective complete, I have Procyon, he's alive, seems unharmed. Currently en route to waypoint A."

"Pursuit?"

"Negative Gulliver, not that we can see. They will be coming, but we're not in imminent danger. Head to the rendez-vous point, we'll be there in less than an hour. Tell Fury we're on our way home, call the other hunters back."

"Affirmative. Can you pass me to Procyon?"

"Sure." Romanoff held the radio out to Rogers. He took it, presumably Procyon was his call sign.

"Gulliver, this is Procyon, receiving."

"It's good to hear your voice, Sir. Are you fit to run?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Fury will want to debrief you when you get back." That would probably be uncomfortable. Fury would be cross that he hadn't noticed something was up, that he'd been willing to trust.

"Copy."

"Over and out, see you in an hour." He lowered the radio.

"Romanoff, is there water in here?"

"Yeah, do you want it?"

"If you don't need it."

"Go ahead." He took it and drank. He was desperately thirsty, hungry too, but thirst would kill him way before hunger did, and if they had a way to run, food wouldn't do him much good anyway.

When the first rays of sunlight started to appear, Romanoff pulled over and got out, but left the engine running. Rogers copied her.

"Stay there." She said. She pulled a brick out of her bag and reached back in to the footwell of the car. "Now, hopefully, when they do catch up, they'll go looking round the car rather than here." The jeep began to move forwards, Romanoff threw herself backwards as it picked up speed. She'd put the brick on the accelerator. Rogers grinned.

"Clever."

"It won't get far, but it'll buy us a few minutes."

"So now we run?"

She nodded, slinging the bag back across her back. "I set the pace."

"Sure."

She set off. The sun was bright on their right now, Romanoff's pace would have been hard for most people to keep up, but Rogers's stride was longer than hers, his breaths were deeper and his heartbeats were stronger. He could always outrun her. But he didn't feel right. He stopped feeling hungry soon enough, he felt ready to run, he wanted to run, or fight, or do something until he was tired. He'd been cooped up for days, he was spoiling for work, but that wasn't it. The shivering hadn't stopped until the moment he'd started running, and he was hot now the sun was on him, he was breathing harder than he should have been, as though he was panting to lose heat like a dog. His head felt light too, he hadn't been able to do much for a few days, now he was running with another super soldier, that was probably why. He'd be glad to be back in friendly territory. He didn't feel safe here, running in the open.

He could do this. Romanoff could not outrun him. He could run four clicks at this speed without any trouble. He'd only done one. This should not be difficult. By the time Rogers guessed they were half way there, his head felt so light it took conscious effort to keep his legs under him and he was breathing far harder than he should have been, almost gasping for breath. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to be able to stop. He should be able to do this. What was wrong with him? He forced himself on, staying at Romanoff's heels.

He had no idea how long he'd been running, he just knew that he wanted to stop, but he couldn't. He had further to run. His chest was burning, his legs were burning, every stride was an effort of will. All he could do was keep his eyes on the back of Romanoff's head, keep up with her. He could do this. This shouldn't be so hard. Then he could take no more. Rogers stumbled to a halt, hands braced against his knees. It only delayed what had to follow. His legs gave way and he fell to the ground. He didn't even put his hands out to catch himself, just fell on to his side.

"Rogers?" He heard Romanoff as though from far away. "Rogers!" Her feet appeared in front of him. "Come on, get up." He tried to pull his legs in, to roll over to get up, but he couldn't move. His body wouldn't obey him. He just lay there, gasping for air, chest burning. Romanoff crouched down. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Rogers." She moved as though she'd thought about pulling him up. He was too heavy for her. He couldn't move. She pulled out her radio. "Red Glass to Gulliver. This is a mayday." She sounded frightened.

"Gulliver receiving you, we're in position to pick you up, what's gone wrong?"

"Procyon is down, repeat: Procyon is down."

**How much of this did you guess?**

**And, in as much detail as you like, what's wrong with Rogers?**


	9. For it

**Fair warning, this chapter is very medical. Subsequent ones are not.**

* * *

"What? Sorry, copy, but what happened?"

"I don't know. He's down, he's gasping, he can't get up. I'd say it was cyanide, but it can't be."

"You're only half a mile from the border."

"Gulliver, I can't carry him. They'll be coming after us. You have to come and get us. It's half a mile. How much of a fuss is Mexico going to kick up?"

"You take the stick for me if this goes bad. We're coming in."

"Out." Romanoff looked back at him, she dug two fingers in to the side of his neck. He could feel his blood pulsing against her fingers. The pain in his chest was unbearable, the muscles in his body wall burned with every desperate breath, but he still couldn't get enough air.

He had no idea how long it was before he heard a helicopter somewhere, getting nearer. Romanoff didn't look worried, so that had to be Gulliver. Wind from the blades picked up dust from the ground, he coughed against it. Rogers couldn't even cover his mouth. The wind stopped and someone else ran up to him, they and Romanoff carried him together in to the helicopter. He still couldn't move.

"Where do we take him?" Someone, a man, called.

"He needs a doctor, isn't that obvious?" Romanoff spat.

"There's a civilian hospital in Van Horn, the question is do we go to that do we go three times the distance to a SHIELD base, he's not exactly Jo Bloggs, is he? He might need someone who's used to dealing with weird stuff."

"How fast can this thing go?"

"She's made for speed, twenty minutes to base? A little over? The wind's on our side."

"Get a line to a medic." Another voice suggested. "Ask them how much time they think we've got."

"Head for SHIELD until they tell you not to." Romanoff called. "And get me that line."

"Gulliver to Arachyra, request a secure line to a medic on Carlsbad base, emergency."

"Copy Gulliver, just a minute." Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes like this, maybe longer. Surely at some point his body would just give up, surely he couldn't keep this up. It hurt too much.

"Guliver, set a radio to SC 4, there's a medic waiting for you." Someone passed something back to Romanoff.

"Romanoff to medic."

"Medic receiving. This came through flagged as an emergency. Is that right?" A woman's voice, distorted by distance.

"Yeah."

"OK, who is the patient?"

"Rogers, Steve Rogers."

"He's not normal is he," The medic shouted something across the room, miles away. "OK, does he have a pulse?" Romanoff grabbed his wrist.

"Yeah, fast as hell."

"Breathing?"

"Gasping like he's had cyanide."

"Conscious?" A hand advanced towards his eyes, he blinked.

"I don't think he can talk, but he's awake."

"OK, do you know how to check an airway?"

"Yes."

"Do that." Romanoff pushed him fully on to his back, put a hand under his neck and lifted, tilting his head back. Nothing happened. "Any better?"

"No."

"OK, say 'now' every time he takes a breath in." For a few seconds, Romanoff did. "OK, that's enough. Pull his lip down and tell me what colour his gums are." She pushed his top lip upwards.

"I don't know, kind of normal."

"He's not red?"

"No."

"Well that rules a couple of things out. Pinch his lip or his hand until it goes white, then tell me how long it takes to turn pink again." She pinched his fingertip, hard.

"Two seconds? A bit over?"

"Right, get his pulse again and tell me when you have it, go for the wrist." Rogers felt her hand on his. Surely he could not survive like this. He was going to die. He had to be going to die.

"Set."

"Start counting… now." Everyone waited in silence. "And stop."

"58."

"232 per minute. Holy cow, his resting's only 46. Right, look carefully at his breathing. Presumably his abdomen is moving as well as his chest."

"Yes."

"When his chest moves out, what does his abdomen do?"

"Moves out."

"Good, patent diaphragm always helps. For now, he's probably gasping because he needs oxygen. Most SHIELD choppers carry a cylinder with a mask on it. Go find it, set it to 50% and hold the mask on him." Romanoff dropped the radio and jumped up. "I'm going to stay on this line until I come up to the helipad to get him." Romanoff reappeared with something in her hands. She pressed the mask over his mouth and nose. The air it gave him was cold, really cold, but it seemed to ease the burning in his chest a bit. The doctor was right, this helped. His limbs were still like lead, his head was still spinning, his whole body was still cramping and burning, but it was better with the mask than without.

"Mask's on him, now what?"

"Can you get him on his side? Do you know what the recovery position is?"

"Yeah." She dropped the radio again, slid her hands under his far shoulder and pulled. He tried to help her, to roll himself over, but he couldn't. He couldn't even do that. She pulled his limbs around to stop him from rolling back over, one leg propped in front of him, one hand by his head.

"He still gasping?"

"Yes."

"OK, there's not a lot more you can do for now. Just stay with him, keep him calm. If anything changes, just say so."

Rogers lay there, chest heaving, burning, still unable to move, for what felt like a very long time. He didn't know if he'd be worse without the oxygen, but he didn't seem to be getting better. It didn't seem to be any easier to breathe. One of Romanoff's hands stayed on his shoulder, just letting him know she was there. There was nothing more she could do, she'd tried to help him, but maybe there was nothing she could do. Maybe they'd done something to him in the past few days that would kill him. Either way, someone knew what he was doing. Someone was in control of this, and cared about him deeply. God knew how this was going to end. All Rogers had to do was trust him.

There was a bump. The side of the helicopter opened, the blades slowing down. He could hear people moving around, running towards him. Romanoff got up and backed away.  
"OK, pick him up." The same woman's voice. Multiple pairs of hand on him. He wanted to help them, he tried to get his legs under himself, to stand up, but he couldn't make himself move. He couldn't hold his body where he wanted it. The hands lifted him on to a table. The table began to move. "Right, Feretti, doors, Mortimer, CVRS, shout if he's getting worse, Page, keep the oxygen on him. Tell me what happened."

"I don't know what else I can tell you." Romanoff said. "We were running, not very fast, he stopped, he fell down, he couldn't get up, he was struggling to breathe."

"Could you hear his breathing before he went down?"

"No." They were indoors, somewhere with bright, white light.

"Ma'am, he's got one heck of a skin tent." A hand grabbed the back of his hand and pulled at the skin.

"Huh. You weren't kidding." A hand pulled at his eyelid, he recoiled, the hand held on and felt the inside of his eyelid. "Mortimer, what's his pulse profile?"

"Narrow and short."

"Page, get bloods for a PCV, electrolytes and metabolites, let's see if we can't figure out what the hell is going on here. Feretti, get him on a monitor." A flurry of movement, hands on his neck, his chest, one of his arms.

"I can't get a vein up."

"No wonder, his BP's 88/41. Go for jugular, but mind his trachea, and don't forget the extra EDTA." Pressure, then a prick in his neck "Heart rate's over 215, on 50% O2 and still gasping. Take the mask off him for a sec, let me listen." They pulled the oxygen mask off his face. The pain in his chest redoubled almost immediately. He couldn't breathe. He cried out and clawed uselessly for the mask. He needed that. He couldn't breathe. "OK, you are way more conscious than I thought you were. We will give it back in a second, just try to breathe normally." He couldn't. There was just no way he could. "Can anyone hear an obstruction?" No one answered. "This is physiological. Feretti, get me a catheter and one unit of isotonic heparinised saline, in that order, and double the heparin up. What's his O2 sat like?"

"Peachy."

"OK, Mortimer, get the PCV going, he looks hypovolaemic." That didn't sound good. The mask was put back over his mouth. If he'd had the breath to spare, he'd have asked if he was going to die, but he couldn't. He couldn't get enough air. "Page, keep an eye on his head, tell me if he passes out." He wouldn't though. For all that his chest was burning, cramping pains running the length of his body, he was alert. He could see and hear and understand, though that was all he could do. His body would not give up. It was trying to keep him ready to fight. Would he just die before it let him stop?

"Catheter?"

"Perfect timing, his veins are a mess." A prick in his left arm. "Drip line?"

"Done."

"His hands are like, white."

"All hands off him, now." There was a pause. He closed his eyes. Whatever happened, this was out of his hands now. There was no point in fighting it.

"Hey." Someone tapped the side of his nose. He twitched. "Stay with us, OK?"

"What was his heart rate when he came in?"

"215."

"203 now, we're winning. Has the serum tube clotted yet?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Get a blood pH." The speaker appeared by his head. She was maybe fifty, short, greying hair. She laid a hand on his forehead. "Stay with us, OK? I know this feels bad, I know this is scary, but we seem to be winning right now. We're gonna get you through this."

"Heart rate's down to 199, BP 98/47."

"See? We're winning."

"Ma'am, he's acidotic."

"Thought so. No bicarb, we'll only mask it. Any news on that PCV yet?"

"Just coming."

"Mortimer, get the electrolytes and metabolites going."

"Oh holy… his PCV is pushing seventy."

"Ramp up the fluids. His normal is fifty-odd, so that's not as bad as it looks."

"And, ma'am, you need to look at this." The doctor turned away.

"Huh. Cream top. Mortimer, shout his blood glucose as soon as you know it. I'm willing to bet he's way under. Page, get me 10ml injectable isotonic glucose in the mean time." Someone else, someone not wearing a white coat, wearing all black, appeared at the edge of Rogers's vision.

"Would someone kindly tell me what the hell is happening here?" Fury's voice.

"Believe me, Director," The doctor said, "if I knew, I'd tell you."

"Doctor O'Malley," Fury replied. "do you mean to tell me that you've had one of my most valuable agents down here for ten minutes running every test you can think of and you still have no idea what's wrong with him."

"We have more of an idea than we did ten minutes ago. We know that there is nothing physically blocking his airways, we know he is or was very hypoxic and acidotic, we know his blood volume is on the floor. All three of those thing we are addressing as fast as we can safely."

"How long until he's fit for debrief?"

"Again, Director, if I knew, I'd tell you. He is improving, HR is down to… 184 and his blood pressure is climbing. I'd say don't hold your breath."

"Are we talking today?"

"Probably."

"Before lunch?"

"Probably."

"Rogers," Fury's face appeared in his field of view, upside down. "if being frozen solid didn't kill you, I don't see how this can. You're OK." He nodded once. He was coming through this, the burning pain was easing too. He had less trouble believing it now; he'd be OK. Fury disappeared again.

"Blood glucose is 2.4 mmol per liter."

"OK, give him 200ml dextrose IV, in the bag. If we've found all the problems, he should pick up fast, and let's take the O2 down to 40%."


	10. Is in

Something they'd done seemed to be working. Rogers was still breathing hard, his heart was still racing, but the pain was fading, he felt more alert, he'd managed to join up the faces of the four medics who were with him to their voices. They sounded happier too, when they'd first started treating him, there'd been a controlled frenzy to everything they'd done, like on a raid if something went wrong, painfully aware that everything might blow up in your face any second, but just as aware that if you panicked, it would. They weren't running across the room any more either. They were still examining him, listening to his chest, scanning him with some sort of hand-held thing… They reduced the oxygen bit by bit, then took the mask off. Rogers gasped for a couple of seconds, then got used to it. He tried to sit up. The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Give it a minute. You might get vertical, but you won't like it much." He lay back down again. "BP of 119 over 75, Heart rate 60. We're winning. Are you feeling OK?"

"Better." He answered. She tilted her head at him. "Tired." He conceded.

"I think anyone'd be tired after going through that." She put her hand in his. "Squeeze my hand." He did. "Do your hands hurt?"

"No."

"I'd expect them to after that long without perfusion, mind you, the fact that you survived being frozen solid suggests something about your ischaemia tolerance." He had no idea what that meant, so just nodded. "Which finger am I poking?"

"First."

"What are four sevens?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Who's the President?"

"Obama, Barak Hussein, Democrat." She ran her hands under his jawline, then round his collarbones.

"What have you had to eat in the last 24 hours?"

"Not much. Three or four biscuits."

"You've been a prisoner, haven't you?"

"Yes." It still felt strange to say it.

"Was that amount of food typical?"

"I had nothing for the first few days, they told me they were keeping me going with fluids."

"Unlikely. You have a calorie requirement of over four thousand. That is hard to do on fluids. Were you told you didn't need to drink too?"

"Yeah."

"That may be the problem." She pulled his shirt up and started feeling his abdomen. "How long were you a prisoner?"

"Hard to say."

"Why?"

"I was drugged out a lot of the time and blindfold the rest of it." She hissed quietly. "Romanoff said I disappeared eight days ago."

"Nothing here hurts, does it?"

"No."

"I'm going to take bloods for round two of testing, see what we've fixed, if anything's still abnormal… I don't suppose you've got any idea what drugs they were giving you."

"No."

"And I don't suppose you've ever collapsed like this before."

"No. Not even before the serum."

"OK, I can't find anything to suggest you're in immediate danger, do you want to try sitting up?" He braced his arms and pushed himself up slowly. His head didn't spin. For the first time in days, his head didn't spin. "You OK?" He nodded. "How would you feel about being debriefed now?" Rogers dipped his head. He had a feeling this was going to be an uncomfortable experience.

"Fury's waiting, isn't he?"

"I don't give a toss if Fury's waiting. If you're not well enough to put up with him right now, that takes precedence." Rogers shook his head. It was tempting to put Fury off, but he didn't have the right.

"Call him. I'm alright."

"OK, Page, page him."

"The only thing I don't get," Page started, scratching at his stubble with one hand, "is why this hit so hard. Surely if it was just dehydration and hypoglycaemia, you'd have known something was wrong way before you collapsed."

"Maybe most people would have, but…" Doctor O'Malley replied. "He stores oxygen at an incredible density, his myoglobin count is ridiculous, which is one of the reasons he doesn't tire, so he could run using more oxygen than he could actually get for a long time before anything went wrong, then acidosis kicks in everywhere at once, there's no glucose so he's oxidizing fat, which is more difficult for some tissues, so CVRS goes mad. You saw how fast his heart was. Going at that speed, the heart stops being effective, it becomes a vicious circle, how thick his blood was will have made that worse too, but I agree, it's odd. Did you know something was wrong?"

"It should have been easy to keep up with Romanoff, but I thought I'd push through it, and we did have to run, we weren't safe where we were."

"So you just kept going as long as you could." He nodded. "Not advisable."

"We didn't have a lot of choice."

"I get that, anything else unusual over the past few days?"

"I've been light-headed a lot, they gave me some water when I asked." The door opened behind him. He looked round. Fury strode in, Romanoff a pace behind him.

"Everyone in here who is not clearance level three, out." Feretti, Mortimer and Page walked out. O'Malley didn't. She showed her ID card to Fury. "It's good to see you, Captain."

"Likewise, Sir." It was. As much as he was dreading this, at least he knew who he was dealing with now. Fury came and leant against the wall facing Rogers. He sighed.  
"As fully as you can remember, Captain, what happened after you left camp eight days ago?"

It was uncomfortable. Rogers kept his account as minimal as he dared, Fury asked for more detail, some of it he didn't know, never taking his eye off Rogers, barely even blinking. Rogers didn't meet his stare. Fury thought he was an idiot for not seeing that the people that had him weren't SHIELD and was making no attempt to hide it. It took a long time, Fury pressed him for detail more and more as time went on, exactly what people had said, exactly what he'd told them. He shouldn't have told Grogan about peoples personal lives; he'd honestly thought she was a SHIELD nurse. He'd thought he could trust her. How much had she known? Had she believed what she'd told him? When he told Fury about Romanoff killing three guards, Fury held a hand up, letting him stop.

"I have the rest of it from Romanoff. Given how fast you saw through us in New York, I'm surprised you fell for that."

"There was nothing he could disprove." Romanoff said, speaking for the first time. "You gave him something he knew was fake in New York, this lot are smart. They stayed close to the truth, you were taken out in combat eight days ago. And, Fury, it's probably good that he's trusting. You could have had a hell of a problem in New York if he hadn't been."

"Do you not remember being captured?"

"No. I remember leaving the camp, heading out along the freeway towards this base, Carlsbad, I think I saw something burning somewhere, that's all."

"Makes sense." Romanoff said. "We found your bike on its stand, so you left it willingly, next to a burnt out car on the side of the freeway. There was a needle on the ground, we had it tested, it had a sedative cocktail in it. Barton and I guessed that they set up what looked like an accident, you went to help because you always would, they drugged you and took you across the border."

"Barton is fine, by the way." Fury said. "He's on his way back in." Rogers drew a deep breath and released it again.

"So what's our next move?"

"First of all, we need to warn the people you named as important to other Avengers, Pots and Solveg. Was there anyone else?" Rogers shook his head. "Then we storm the facility, take everyone we can alive for questioning. There are people on at the Mexican authorities for permission to run an op right now. Will he be fit to fight?" Fury asked the doctor, who was still sitting in the corner of the room, reading something. She hesitated.

"He looks OK right now, but I don't want to forget how he looked an hour ago. I hope that we've found all of it, I hope all he needs is food, water and sleep, but I don't want to bet on it."

"They'll be heading out in 24 hours. I want him on this one. He knows who's who in there. Make it happen." Doctor O'Malley didn't look pleased.

Rogers looked out of the window of the jeep and pulled his shield off his back. The sun was starting to rise, they were heading back to the base he'd been held at. He'd been cleared for active duty, though O'Malley hadn't seemed happy about it: "If you even start to feel odd, if you even think you're going to, get out of there. They're competent soldiers, they'll manage without you." He had a squad of twenty SHIELD agents, Romanoff and Barton, he still felt relieved every time he glanced at him, normal and so obviously alive. He'd spent most of the journey trying to learn the squad, who was good at what, how he could use them best. He'd have been happier if he knew the layout of the base better, Romanoff had tried to help him, but there was just no substitute for seeing a place yourself. He picked up his radio.

"Everyone, our priorities here are intel and taking people alive, so be loud, be scary, you can shoot to kill, but if you have a choice, shoot legs. There is a fuel tank, stay well clear of it, keep to cover, keep your heads on, these are probably mercenaries, we kill a few, the rest should give in." He lowered the radio. The jeeps stopped. He shouldered the door and sprinted out, the others followed him in file. Barton dropped to a crouch and shot an arrow high over their heads, at one of the guard towers. If that had hit someone, he hadn't had time to cry out. Four across, five deep, they broached the gateway, only then did the defenders start to cry in alarm. People on either side of him were shooting, best cover was to the left, they needed to force defenders right. He signalled, the squad followed him, forming up behind cover. The place was a mess, crates everywhere, cover everywhere. Barton had got up in to the guard tower, good. The guards had taken cover, effectively, few shots were being fired now, people were waiting for sightlines.

"Lay down your arms!" He bellowed. The other SHIELD soldiers took up the shout. Nobody did. He picked up his radio. "Barton, ready to blow the tank on my mark. I break cover then, keep them down."

"Ready." Baton said softly.

"Three, two, one, mark." In the split second it took the arrow to reach the fuel, Rogers jumped up. As he vaulted his cover, shield over his head and torso, bright orange light flashed across his eyes, a wave of hot air and the sound of rending metal hit him as he flew. Everyone else would be shielding themselves. He knew he'd be alright. The air felt thicker, he hit the ground. Five paces. He took off again, vaulting the first row of hostile cover. Five of them, crouching, still covering their ears from the explosion. He landed on one of them, knocking all the breath out of the man's body. The second he caught with the edge of his shield. They were starting to recover. Men behind would try to shoot him in a second. He'd done this enough times to know that. He charged the third, the man raised his fists, but wasn't quick enough. The one behind him was ready. Rogers jumped and kicked him in the guts. He rolled in the air. The fifth man had a gun trained on him. He tucked himself behind his shield. Someone else would have to get him out of this. That was a fully automatic weapon. The man jerked and fell silently, a hole in the side of his head. The whole squad had moved up. This was a very close fight now.

"Lay down your arms!" He repeated. The whole squad took it up again. He shuffled right to cover.

"Give it up!" Someone on the other side shouted. "Half of us are gonna get killed if we fight this out!"

"We surrender!" Someone else bellowed Rogers breathed out. The cry was echoed by a dozen or more men. Five bullets hammered in to the crate just above his head. He curled tighter behind his shield. What?

"Multiple companies!" Someone shouted from behind him. Romanoff. Someone roared in pain. Someone on the other side.

"Give me cover!" He shouted back. He jumped up, sprinted to the next bit of cover. As he vaulted it, he caught movement behind him on his left, someone was following him. Romanoff. Any that were shooting were shooting at him, mostly at his shield. He could feel the impact of bullets. He got over the cover. Six of them. He went right. Romanoff would cover his left. He took the first one with an uppercut to the jaw, hard enough to break it. Romanoff was behind him, clearing the other way. Two of the men in front of him dropped their guns and lifted their hands. Rogers kicked their guns away.

"We surrender." Someone shouted. The shooting stopped.

"On your knees, hands behind your heads." He ordered. He stood up fully, breathing hard. Harder than he should have been? It didn't matter. He was OK. Everyone in the yard seemed to have surrendered now. He looked back at his own men. "Everyone OK?"

"No casualties, Sir." The squad commander said. "And that was brave."

"Let's disarm this lot and leave them secure." It galled Rogers to have to wait. If this lot were like HYDRA, any other prisoners they might have in there were in danger for their lives every second since Barton had blown the tank. But they'd needed that to prevent a stalemate. Rogers blew out hard and scuffed at the ground.


	11. Dying

They were quick about it. They searched the mercenaries, they were armed and armoured too disparately to be anything else, and left them kneeling in lines, hands tied behind them, Barton and three others watching them. They had eleven prisoners, they'd killed five. There were probably more guards somewhere. Rogers split the rest of the squad in half to search, Romanoff stayed with him. They went quickly and quietly, listening hard. Their chances were much better if they saw hostiles before they saw them. They checked every doorway for signs of life, most rooms looked as though no one had set foot in them for weeks. One of the first that looked occupied was a room about twenty feet square with a single bed in it, an empty plastic cup beside one of the bed legs.

"This is where I was, isn't it?" He asked Romanoff. She nodded and pointed to the shaft.

"They found the bodies, they're not there any more." Something up ahead was making a lot of noise, mechanical noise, like hydraulics, pulses getting gradually faster. The corridor turned left, then right. Two guards levelled P90s at him. He raised his shield and charged them, they were only ten feet away. Romanoff followed him. One of them managed to shoot at him, but hit his shield. He hit one, Romanoff hit the other. Both went down. Rogers pulled the gun out of the guard's hands and kicked it back. Romanoff did the same.

"Up." Rogers said. Both men got up, hands raised. "Ahead of us, go." They went, heads down. Whatever was making that noise was getting closer. They opened the door at the end of the corridor.

"Hands up, nobody try anything clever." Rogers called as they crossed the threshold. Only two armed men, who dropped their guns when they saw that two of their own were prisoners. Four others in the room, three men, two of them about thirty-five, one pale and red haired, the other a similar age but sandy haired, the third probably ten years older, bald and heavy set, and a woman, a slender woman of about thirty with long, dark brown hair and wide brown eyes. She looked absolutely terrified. She raised her hands and dropped to her knees quicker than anyone else did. The room looked as though everything electrical had been stripped out in a hurry, cables lay everywhere. Whatever was making that noise was somewhere to the left.

"Romanoff, go see what that noise is." Romanoff walked off to the left and cursed.

"It's an MRI machine, with every damn computer on the base in it. They just burned their records."

"Nobody say a word. He only knows which of us is which by voices." The oldest doctor said, with a deep voice and a slight southern accent. Ryman. Romanoff stared hard at him, then turned on the red haired doctor.

"Name." He didn't reply. Romanoff bent her knees and punched him in the guts. He moaned and doubled over. "Name." She kicked him. "I can hit much harder than that."

"Doctor Samuel O'Brady."

"Thank you." She moved on to the next, the sandy haired man. "Name." He drew breath, looked at Ryman, then looked at Romanoff.

"Jason Michaels."

"Thank you." She turned on Ryman.

"I know who that is." Rogers put in. Romanoff passed him and stood in front of Grogan, who was gasping with fright.

"And you?"

"Lucy Grogan. Captain, I had no idea what was going on here, you have to believe me." Romanoff shushed her. She fell silent. Romanoff was being very rough. These were civilian prisoners. Rogers picked up his radio, steadying his breathing as best he could.

"Alpha one, what's your status?"

"Found eight more mercs here, half asleep by the look of them, and a load of stored food. There's nothing more to search our end."

"OK, head back outside, we'll follow you out."

"Copy, over and out."

"Who's in charge?" Rogers asked the room at large. Nobody answered, but everyone at least glanced at Ryman. Ryman stared at the floor. Easy enough. He looked around the room slowly. There were machines lying everywhere, some of them overturned. Romanoff was looking at them too. "Any idea what these are?" He asked her quietly.

"Some." She replied. "Ultrasound, X-ray tube, centrifuge," She nodded at some of them. "But not all of them, not by a long shot." Rogers nodded and turned back to the captives.

"Cuff them and get them up in file."

Back in the courtyard, the SHIELD soldiers obviously knew what they were doing. They had all the prisoners kneeling in ranks, except two who were being treated by first aiders and three were standing up.

"These three have identified themselves as mercenary captains, Sir." A SHIELD guard said as he approached. He nodded, breathing hard.

"Run the surviving mercs past them, let them pick out their own."

"They'll lie." Romanoff muttered to him.

"I know, but we'll get some truth." The SHIELD soldiers did that quickly and efficiently, marking their foreheads with a felt pen A, B or C. Romanoff marked all three doctors and Grogan with the letter I. "No injuries to ours?" Rogers asked the squad commander.

"None, Sir."

"Good. Load up the mercs, not in their groups, don't let them talk on the road, leave the place empty; we can't spare the men to garrison it properly. Leave the I group to me and the other Avengers, plus one of your drivers. Hood all of them on the road, we want them disorient. And tell your troops I'm impressed." The commander smiled. Rogers looked away. He missed his Howlin' commandos, troops he'd known backwards and inside out, troops he would only have needed to nod at to order, troops he'd trusted with his life so many times it hadn't even occurred to him that they might fail him by the end.

"Yessir."

Rogers, Romanoff and Barton loaded the three doctors and Grogan in to one of the smaller jeeps, Barton and the driver, Parkhurst, in the front. Rogers looked round at the four prisoners. Ryman was sitting with his hands on his knees, apparently completely calm. The two younger men were tense, sitting stiff, twitching when something brushed the bags over their heads. Grogan looked even more frightened. She was breathing fast, swallowing often. She seemed to be shivering a little. She sniffed now and then too, was she crying? Rogers looked long and hard at her. He'd though he'd know her, the girl from Connecticut who liked fixing what people did to each other on purpose, who'd worked so hard to keep him comfortable. She'd been keeping him prisoner with the rest of them. Unless she genuinely hadn't known, unless she'd genuinely thought that he was blind, had nearly died and could not bear his eyes to be touched. He breathed out hard, then breathed in again involuntarily. His breathing hadn't settled. If anything, it was getting worse. Romanoff met his eye.

"You OK?"

"Yeah." He said, though his long, drawn breath. Like before, it wasn't that he couldn't breathe, more like he couldn't breathe enough.

"Oh, so it is you I can hear gasping, Captain Rogers," Ryman said, he sounded as calm as he looked. "I thought it might be Grogan." She flinched at the sound of her name.

"What's it to you?" Romanoff said, motioning Rogers to be quiet.

"You feel it, don't you?" Ryman said, as though Romanoff hadn't spoken. "Eating away at you, bit by bit." What was he talking about?

"Shut up." Romanoff said, motioning Barton and Parkhurst not to interrupt her.

"You know by now, don't you? Day by day, you're getting weaker, it's stripping your life force away." Rogers's breath caught. They'd done something to him. They'd done something to him to stop him fighting them and running away.

"Shut up." Romanoff repeated, more loudly.

"You've caught us, well done, but we're no use to you once you're dead." He was dying? He couldn't know that. These people had lied every step of the way, but something was wrong with him, very wrong. "In exchange for our freedom, we can tell you what we did and how to reverse it, though in a couple of days it won't be reversible, we can still tell you how to stop it before it gets any worse. If this goes on, Captain, by the end of next week you won't even be able to climb the stairs." Rogers looked sideways at Ryman. That was as terrifying a thought as being blind. "Let us go, and we'll tell you how to stop it." Romanoff caught Rogers's eye and mouthed

"Liar." She raised her voice again. "You'll cheat us. We know the kind of men you are. We let you go, you disappear." She sounded choked.

"Keep Grogan as a guarantee or something." Grogan cowered back, whimpering quietly. "What choice do you have? You're the US government, how far will you dare go with us? Stress positions, cold, heat, hunger… We can endure that for a while." Romanoff lifted a finger to her lips again. "Will you electrocute us? Waterboard us?" He chuckled. "I'll be surprised if you dare to do as much as stick a hand down Grogan's pants." Grogan pulled her knees tight together. "For our freedom, we can tell you what we were trying to do, and what we did, before it's too late."  
"We know what you were trying to do." Romanoff said. "You were trying to replicate Erskine's success. People have been trying ever since." Ryman laughed softly.

"Why would we create something we can't destroy if it turns on us? Why would we make a weapon we can't unmake?" Romanoff grinned and tossed her head back in victory. Rogers leant forwards, elbows on knees, still panting. They'd been trying to revert him. Was that even possible? Could he be shrunk and weakened again? Shrunk maybe not, but weakened, it felt that way. He wasn't right. He really wasn't right.

Back at base, Romanoff told Rogers to go and get the medics to look at him, insisting she and Barton could deal with the prisoners. The medics didn't keep him long, they shot him with something to bring his heart rate down, which worked, watched him for long enough for him to be really sick of sitting still, then sent him off to Fury, who was waiting to talk to him. He found Fury with Romanoff and Barton, watching cell cams for the four I group prisoners, the doctors and Grogan. Romanoff and Barton apparently hadn't been there long. Romanoff was speaking when he walked in.

"The mercs are cooperating, they know we'll send them down for way worse than having illegal guns if they don't, they know they're not POWs. There are four groups, all but one has done exactly as we asked."

"How big is the difficult group?"

"Only three guys, all young, I don't think they know what we can do to them."

"Barton, once we're done here, go and… inform them of their position. Get them on side." Barton nodded. Those mercs were in for a rough time. "This I group, what's been done?"

"Strip searched, then given their clothes back." Romanoff replied. "Kept blindfold as much as possible. Ryman was forthcoming in the jeep, but a lot of it was crap."

"Such as?"

"Tough guy talk, he said Rogers was dying, so we need to get him on side fast"

"He give a time frame?"

"Fury, he's bluffing."

"Did he?"

"Ten days or so. He also said he could hold out against us that long and that we wouldn't dare waterboard or use electricity." Fury leant back and folded his arms.

"Did he now?"

"The only thing he said I really believe is that they weren't trying to copy Rogers, they were trying to undo what was done to him." Fury nodded.

"Rogers, what can you tell us about them?" Rogers told them what he could remember, who'd seemed to be in charge, what little background he knew, or had been told.

"Grogan said she knew nothing about what they were actually doing, I think it's at least possible she's genuinely a civilian who got mixed up in this somehow."

"Also an easy way to protect yourself." Romanoff said. Fury nodded once.

"I'm wrapping this up. Barton, you know what your job is. Romanoff, you're with me, front line interrogation. We start this gently, vulnerability, restraint, but we make it clear it will get worse. We don't want to lie about how we did this if we don't have to. We take them in turn, the three doctors. Leave the girl for now. We give it 24 hours, then we meet back here and review. All dismissed. Romanoff, I'll see you down there in fifteen." The three Avengers walked out together.

"At least he let me try Ryman my way." Romanoff said. "I guess the intel we want is too specific for that." Barton murmured in assent.

"Now I gotta go and rattle mercenaries for two hours."

"Oh, you've got two hours of rattling peoples cages." Romanoff scoffed. "I've got 24. We'll do two hours of each, then the next, then the next, we get no sleep, they don't either… Not my idea of fun."

"You're a good interrogator though." Rogers said. Romanoff sighed.

"I like it when it's freehand, when it's just your mind, your will against theirs, you win by misleading them, outlasting them, being braver, being stronger. Then it's an art, it's skilful, it's satisfying. Once they're nerves are shot and they're exhausted…" She shook her head. "Not my idea of fun."

**Just to make it clear at this point: not everything any narrator of mine says is to be trusted.**


	12. That

Rogers wandered back to his quarters. He should probably try and sleep for a bit. This stuff made him really uncomfortable. He'd done take-downs loads of times, catching an enemy soldier, getting them on the ground, blindfolding them, shouting questions at them, hitting them once if they didn't answer. It wasn't fun, but it worked. When you needed specific information quickly, like where the prisoners were in a base or where the command centre was, it worked, it was your only option really. Having four civilians completely under your control for days on end, stripping them of their humanity, using things only made to make someone else's existence miserable, that was what the Nazis did. If they were supposed to be the good guys, shouldn't they hold themselves to higher standards? Shouldn't they be fair to their enemies as well as their friends? It did seem to be Fury's plan to leave Grogan alone at least, she probably knew very little, Rogers couldn't help but wonder how much. There was something very aversive about the idea of torturing a woman, more so than the men. Grogan seemed so scared, so vulnerable, surely Fury would realise he didn't need to hurt her to make her tell what little she knew. Even if she'd known he was being lied to, she'd been good to Rogers, she'd done what she could to keep him comfortable. Maybe he should go and check on her, make sure Fury hadn't done anything to her.

The cells on this base were barren and exposed, not as much as the one Loki had been kept in, but still. The front walls were bullet-proof glass from below hip height upwards, the only furniture was a low, bare cot at the far end. Grogan was pacing hers, eyes down. She jumped and backed away when Rogers opened the door, hands raised as if to fend him off. She looked at him uncertainly. He closed the door behind him and spread his hands.

"I'm not gonna hurt you." She breathed in, the backs of her legs hit the cot.

"You I kind of believe." She breathed out, as though forcing herself to be calm. "Why are you in here then?" He shrugged.

"To see if you're OK."

"We've changed round." She shook her head, looking down. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what they did to you, I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."

"How did that happen? How did you get caught up with them?" Grogan sat down and set her head in her hands.

"I told you my Dad was a lab tech, didn't I? When I was half way through college, he was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. Suddenly he couldn't work, he needed looking after, it bled us dry. I was already in a lot of debt because of college, but suddenly my parents couldn't help me. Dad was insured, so that helped, but I still had two years of school to go. That's a lot of money." He leant against a wall. This felt like it might be a long story. "The thing with debt is, once you're in it, you're in it. Getting out is really, really hard. Graduating and getting a job helped, but it didn't help enough. Interest was out of control by then, I couldn't keep up. One month, I couldn't pay the rent, I was about to get evicted, then I did something really stupid." She glanced up at him. Her eyes were shining with tears. "I went to a loan shark. He paid off a fair chunk of my debt, but then I owed him too, and his interest was… I couldn't pay. I couldn't even begin to pay. He said that if I didn't pay inside a month, he'd come and find me and sell me, as an organ donor or a prostitute, whichever got him more money." She sniffed quietly. "I was terrified, I couldn't go to the cops, I'd been to a loan shark, then about a week later, Ryman contacted me. He said he needed a nurse who'd work antisocial hours in an antisocial location and not ask any questions. He said he'd pay off my debt to the loan shark and half the legitimate stuff, give me bed and board while I was working, plus six hundred dollars a week, which really isn't bad. I'm ashamed to say it, but I didn't ask any questions. I didn't feel like I had any choice." She looked up at him again. Tears were running down her face now. Rogers looked away from her. He could have said she'd done the best she could have, but she hadn't and she knew that, she knew she should have gone to the police. Life hadn't been kind to her though, losing a parent is always tough, he knew that, and he'd heard of loan sharks doing horrible things to their debtors, in 1930 at least.

"So you met up with Ryman and he took you to Mexico."

"No, he sent a guard. I met him that day. He told me there was a patient waiting for me, gave me a medical history, three days of extreme ocular pain, meningitis causing various neuropathies, now under control, still blind, still presumed ocular pain." Rogers took a minute to work that out. It was his fake medical history. "He said you'd been restrained for the reason I told you, violent seizures. They told me to tell you it was a SHIELD facility, and gave me reasons various people couldn't be there."

"Did you know it wasn't true?" She clenched her jaw, still looking down.

"I didn't ask. I didn't make up any lies, I just repeated what I was told."

"Why did they bother with the pretence? Why didn't they just leave me blindfolded and tied up?" She shrugged.

"I guess they were scared they wouldn't hold you. I don't know how they caught you in the first place, but I guess they didn't want to have to do it again, or they thought you could do enough damage that they didn't want to risk it. They had a file on you somehow, they knew you'd respect a superior's orders. And I guess if you're after medical data, it's useful if the patient's on side. You wouldn't have told us when you felt different if you hadn't thought we were trying to help you." She paused. "Is Barton OK, by the way?" Rogers laughed quietly.

"He's fine. I was talking to him an hour ago." There was a silence. "Did they tell you to… make a pass at me?" She bit her lip.

"No, that was just me being… Not quite as in control as I'd like." She looked up at him questioningly. She smiled. He shook his head.

"No. I'm still way too old for you, and I'm your captor. That just shouldn't happen." She dropped her head again.

"I'm so screwed. I don't know what you're gonna charge me with, I guess I'm an accessory to kidnap, but I'll have a record. I'll never work as a nurse again. What the hell am I going to do?" Rogers came and sat down at the opposite end of her bed.

"We're not the police, we can't actually charge you with anything. We can turn over what we have to the police, but we may not. If the people in charge believe you, we'll probably just let you go with a slapped wrist." She looked round at him.

"Do you believe me?" He hesitated.

"Yeah, I think I do."

They were on day two, and still going. Rogers was reporting for vitals checks every twelve hours, though Romanoff was still adamant that it was a bluff, he wasn't dying, Fury seemed less sure.

"We're making progress," Fury said. Rogers glanced at Romanoff. It was hard to tell from her face. "just I've come up with a couple of ideas. Ryman is expecting physical pain now." Rogers felt himself tense. Ryman wasn't a soldier. Whatever he'd done, this wasn't right. "He might respond well to someone who seems to be on his side. Take him food and morphine. There's a tray waiting for him in the refectory, on your way, go to the infirmary and give someone this. Romanoff, go with him and brief him." He handed Rogers a piece of paper, folded over. Rogers turned and headed for the door. If this got Ryman to talk, it was better than whatever Fury would try next.  
"Barton, there's a pressure point we want you to-" Fury glanced across at Rogers. He was waiting until he'd gone before he gave Barton his instructions. What was Fury telling Barton to do that he didn't want him to hear? Something very nasty, no doubt, but why Barton not Romanoff? Rogers didn't really want to know.

The doctor in the infirmary, not Doctor O'Malley, read Fury's note with a scowl on his face.

"This should not be allowed." He said as he handed over a syringe full of clear liquid. "you should not be allowed to use prescription drugs in interrogation. This goes in to muscle or you pick skin up like this." He picked up a fold of skin from Rogers's forearm. "Needle goes in longways, not crossways. Keep the needle capped until you actually use it, then re-cap the needle and bring it back here."

"Fury hopes that by doing this he'll avoid worse." Rogers said. The doctor didn't look convinced.

Ryman was lying on his back on the bed when Rogers came in. He sat up when Rogers came in.

"Really?" He said. "Your old one-eye's tried bargaining, he's tried threat, he's tried getting that red-haired hussy to twist me round, hit me, he must be running out of ideas. I doubt he dares go much further, so he's sent me the old soldier, honest and fair, to appeal to my better nature." Rogers set the tray down next to Ryman.

"Fury didn't send me. I'm off duty for observation."

"Ah, of course, the time bomb. How are you feeling?" Rogers shrugged.

"Not so bad. I haven't done much though." Ryman blew out through his nose. "Look, Fury is a long way from out of ideas. He will go further than you know. In half an hour, he'll be back for you. I don't know what he's going to do, I saw something that looked like an electric pig goad and what looked like dental equipment, so I'm betting it's bad."

"So you're doing this behind his back? What happened to the good soldier?" Rogers looked away. He was not good at this.

"What am I supposed to do if I think my superiors are doing something I think is really wrong? I was… made, changed to fight Nazis. One of our reasons for hating them is how they treated their prisoners. They tortured them, enslaved them, experimented on them, killed them… Why do we fight if we're no better?" He picked up the syringe. "This is morphine. I don't know how much it will help you, but…" Ryman hesitated, then took the syringe from him.

"If Fury realises I'm drugged?"

"He'll guess this was me pretty quickly. He knows how I feel about…" Ryman stared hard in to his face.

"Why would you help me?"

"Because I don't believe that anyone deserves to be tortured." Ryman breathed out slowly. He pulled the cap off the needle and held out his left arm.

"Press there."

"The doctor said in muscle or under skin."

"I'm also a doctor, he just thought that you'd stuff up intravenous injection. This works fine." Rogers grasped him firmly round the elbow. Ryman let a blue vein fill up along his forearm. He lifted the needle and shoved it hard in to Rogers's forearm, ramming the plunger down. Rogers pulled back and jumped up.

"What the..?"

"I'm not fooled, Captain. That's not morphine, that's some PAF agonist to make it worse. Enjoy the next hour, everything's gonna hurt." Rogers shook his head.

"That was morphine."

"So why do you look scared?"

"I don't know what morphine does to me, I don't know what you did to me, I have no idea how the two will interact." He let himself out. That had backfired. Ryman was too sly to be caught like that. Romanoff was outside, waiting for him.

'No joy?"

"No, just ten mils of morphine in my arm." Romanoff cursed softly.

"Fury's trying to do it legally right now, very little physical stuff, but they know they're being interrogated, so my usual technique is useless. They're stubborn. They've been trained against legal methods, they just say nothing or give us memorised answers. They're working for someone above Ryman though, we're pretty sure about that. Ryman has orders from somewhere, but I think he'll be the last to break. Fury's getting frustrated, so it's gonna get worse for them."


	13. We're born

Two hours later, the on-duty doctor let Rogers go. He still had nothing to do. They were stress testing him daily, seeing how long his heart rate took to top 140 running at a fixed speed. His results weren't good. When they'd first tested him when he'd woken up, thawed, they'd given up after over an hour. Now it was taking twenty minutes or less, but at least he didn't seem to be getting worse. It did put him off trying to train though. He remembered too well how it had felt not to be able to breathe. He didn't want to repeat it. He couldn't remember a time he'd been afraid to train. It had kept him sane right after he'd woken up, he didn't need to interact with anyone or deal with any technology to do it. He just needed space to run, and preferably a punchbag. At least he didn't seem to be getting worse, so maybe Ryman had been lying. But he wasn't well. He was weak, he was sick, and nobody knew why, except those three doctors. Would knowing what it was make any difference, would they even be able to fix it? It was out of his hands, there was no point in worrying about it, but it was hard not to. He'd wandered back to his quarters. He closed the door behind himself and looked around. He had nothing to do in here either. It was already tidy, his uniform was clean, ready to be used again as soon as he was fit to use it. What would happen to it if he was never fit to use it again? Stark would probably try to get his hands on the shield, to make it in to something else. Would SHIELD try to pass the mantel on? He'd become a bit of a symbol; Patriotism was useful even when you weren't at war. It might be in America's interests to keep the idea alive. Even if he was never fit enough to fight again himself, he might be able to train his successor, or advise on how he should be trained failing that. He knelt down and leant against his bed.

"God, thank you that I can see, thank you that Romanoff found me, thank you that I don't seem to be getting worse. You know what actually happened to me, if you want us to find out the truth, we will. I pray that whatever happens, I'd still find a way to be useful." He shifted his weight. "God, you told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. I know that what Fury is doing is wrong. I know he's not doing it for fun, but it's still wrong. You also tell us to submit to those in authority over us and to work as though we're working for you. I don't want to be involved with any of it; I don't want to pretend it's OK. Just… show me how to behave with it. I don't like being Fury's pawn like this, I don't like being used as part of a torture plan, but I guess it's better to be used as the good cop than being asked to actually… Show me what I can do to make this better, show me how I can protect the innocent. Amen." He hadn't specifically meant Grogan when he'd started that sentence, but he didn't really believe any of the others was innocent. Ryman had definitely known exactly what he was doing, and Rogers couldn't see how he'd have been able to keep it from the doctors who were helping him. He got up. He had nothing better to do and he was really restless. He might as well go and check on Grogan again.

She wasn't pacing this time. He couldn't see her at once, she was sitting curled up against the front wall, hidden from sight. When he opened the door, she jumped like she'd been shot at and backed away, eyes wide with fright. She was crying. She stopped when she realised who he was, took three paces forward and almost fell against him. Without thinking, he caught her. She was shaking. He shushed her quietly. Someone had done something to her. She was a civilian. She'd probably known nothing about any of it and someone had hurt her enough to make her like this. He led her over to the bed and sat her down.

"What happened?" She wasn't looking at him. She was curled over, staring at he hands, knees clamped together.

"N-nothing I guess."

"Something. You wouldn't be like this if you'd been left alone. Who was it?"

"A guy was in here. I don't know his name." That only really ruled out Romanoff. There were only a dozen women on this base.

"What did he do?" Grogan took a deep breath, as though to steady herself.

"He came in, first of all he just stared at me, but it was… how he stared. He didn't really look at my face, he was looking at…" She glanced down herself. "and he was really staring, like... He closed the door and came in towards me, still really staring at… When he got close, I backed up, he followed me. He never touched me then, but it felt like he was shoving me back in to that corner." She pointed to where she'd been when he came in. "He came up really close to me and just stood there. It felt like ages, I was so scared, I thought… Anyway, when he'd had enough, he was like 'there's no hurry, it's not like you're going anywhere' shoved me hard against the wall and walked out." Rogers sighed.

"I'm sorry."

"It was to try and make me talk, wasn't it, rather than him just… doing that for the sake of it." He nodded.

"I think so."

"What do they want?"

"They're trying to figure out what they did to me, to try and undo it."

"And Ryman won't talk?"

"No." She shook her head.

"I don't know, Captain. I wish I did, I wish I could help you, but I can't tell you what I don't know. They were careful what I heard, I didn't see anything – wait, no. Show me your left arm." He held it out to her. She turned it over. "You heal really fast. There's no mark left, but when I first saw you, I noticed you had two stitches here." She pointed. "They took them out two days after you woke up, obviously you never saw them. They did something to you there. And there was the soma early on, propfol to put you out, some sort of local anaesthetic in your eyes at least some of the time, that's all I can remember."

"Doesn't matter right now. The guy who was in here, who was he?"

"I said, I don't know his name."

"What did he look like?"

"White man, light brown hair, blue eyes, shorter than you."

"How much shorter?"  
"Maybe up to your nose?" The list of men this could be was getting shorter.

"How old would you say?"

"Forty maybe? He's thickset, he's probably as muscled as you are in the shoulders, but his right shoulder was bigger than his left." Barton. Archery works one arm more than the other. He was just about the only man on the base who was obviously lop-sided. Barton had done that to her.

"Right." He got up.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"To find this guy and get him to leave you alone."

"He wouldn't do it if you were here."

"Maybe." She got up to follow him.

"I don't want you to leave."

"I am going to find this guy and make sure he doesn't do it again."

It took him maybe half an hour to find Barton, he wasn't in his quarters, the training range or the canteen. He was leaving an arms locker, bow on his back, when Rogers caught up with him.

"Hey, Barton." He turned.

"Captain."

"What you did to Grogan, we don't do that. Don't do it again." He stopped, close enough to Barton that most men would have backed away. Barton stood his ground.

"I had orders, Captain. Romanoff said she was touchy about that, Fury sent me to rattle her cage."

"I don't care how much it scares her. We say we're the good guys, we don't do that. We don't even pretend to. Part of the deal is being better than the people we fight."

"You have an issue, take it up with Fury. I never asked to do that, I'm not one of those nutjobs that thinks its fun. I do what I'm told. That's why Fury pays me."

"He's right, Captain." Another voice behind him. He turned. Fury was standing in the doorway. "If you have a problem with a man following an order, you take it up with the man who gave the order, not the man who followed it."

"OK then. We should not be doing that."

"Captain, we are expediting this interrogation to get you back on form as soon as possible, and compared to what I could be authorising, it's nothing. We can and will go further if we have to."

"Ends shouldn't justify means. There are things we should never do, that's one of them."

"I did not order Agent Barton to assault her. I ordered him to make her think she was at risk of assault. That's no different to what Romanoff and I have been doing to the three men so far."

"Yes it is. If you'd sent Romanoff in to menace her, that would have been the same. Sending Barton in like that isn't. If we have an advantage over women as men, it's wrong to use it that way. We're stronger, so we use our strength to protect women, not to overpower them or threaten them." Fury sighed.

"Rogers, maybe in 1940, women didn't get involved. This isn't 1940. Women get involved. They're just as capable of being our enemies as men, look at Romanoff. I will do whatever I have to to make a man talk, I'll do the same to a woman."

"Would you have sent Romanoff to stare at the men like Barton stared at Grogan?"

"You think it would have worked?"

"That's my point."

"A strategy doesn't work on everyone so we shouldn't use it?"

"We should never do that. Whatever the stakes are, whoever the woman is, it is never acceptable to do that."

"But it worked." Fury said.

"What?"

"She said nothing to Barton, but she told you half a dozen drugs that had been used on you, and a potential surgical site. I've informed the infirmary. Go and get those checked out." Rogers didn't move.

"We're not done here."

"That wasn't a request, Rogers."

It was evening. Rogers was heading up to quarters, though he doubted he'd sleep for ages yet. He had stuff he could read. Footsteps behind him. Romanoff. She was barefoot and carrying her shoes, leaving wet footprints on the floor.

"What happened to you?"

"Waterboarding." She shook her head. "We were at it half an hour, you always get soaked. Fury's getting desperate. He feels it's an insult to his manhood if someone won't break. He's very worried about Ryman, but someone's trained him well. Rounds are long with him, he's obviously fitter than he looks. I'm out for a few hours, Barton's down there now."

"Barton's down there?"

"Yeah." Romanoff froze, mid stride. "I wasn't meant to tell you that." Barton was down with the I group prisoners and he wasn't supposed to know about it. Grogan. He was going to go for Grogan. He could stop this. He had to stop this.

He took off, past Romanoff, the way she'd come. She didn't try to stop him. What was the quickest way from here? Quarters were on the third floor of the personnel block. Would he do better to go through the armoury or round it? Probably round. There would be fewer people in his way. He launched himself off the last flight of stairs from half way up, people scrambled out of his way. Grogan and the others were being held on the other side of the base, but this base wasn't huge. He kept on at a sprint, as fast as he could move. He could feel his body gearing up to cope with his pace, breathing faster and harder. Too fast? He didn't care right now. He was not going to let Barton do that. Not while he could stand up. He could overpower Barton, he knew that, hopefully Barton would back down before it came to that. Rogers hurtled round the last corner, skidded to a halt and punched the code in to the door. First right, then 279341 on that door. He opened it. Fury was standing directly in front of him.

"Rogers-"

"Where's Barton?"

"Rogers, listen to me. Everything happening right now is a set up. Barton is right behind you." Rogers glanced round. He was, his bow and quiver lying on a table beside him. "He's not going to touch the girl because you're not going to let him. Grogan and Michaels are showing remorse for what they've done to what they see as a good man, so we're going to provide them with more evidence. Barton will go in ahead of you, he will approach the girl, you will follow him and intervene. Barton will resist you and antagonise you. You will both posture and threaten, trying to make the other back down, in sight of Grogan and Michaels, for some minutes. The argument will escalate to physical violence. I will enter with a group of guards, they're well armoured, and attempt to separate you. Rogers, you will then feign an episode of… whatever it is that's happened to you, the breathing thing. You will then be removed to the infirmary. I will remain, alone and see if anyone volunteers anything." Rogers shook his head. What? So even Romanoff running in to him had been a set-up.

"Say all that again, slowly."

"You carry on as though this was real, then collapse. Anything you and Barton say to each other until this is over is assumed to be lies. You may hold nothing against each other. Barton," Barton passed him and walked on to the corridor. Rogers went to follow. Fury caught his arm. "Give him a minute. You still look like you've run, which is good." It wasn't really. He should have recovered by now. Fury pointed to a CCTV screen, split four ways, showing each cell. Grogan jumped up from where she'd been sitting and backed away from the door. "She's seen him, you want to get to him as he opens the door." Grogan hit the wall, then shrank back further. "Now, go." Rogers shouldered the door after Barton.


	14. To eternal

"Hey." Barton turned in the doorway of Grogan's cell. He pulled the door closed again, glancing back at Grogan.

"I have my orders, Captain. Don't interfere." Rogers shook his head and folded his arms, advancing on Barton. Barton met his eyes calmly.

"Not this. Never this."

"You're a goddam soldier. You know there comes a point where you just do as your told."

"What, would you shoot a kid dead because someone told you to? You're not a mercenary anymore."

"She's an enemy agent, Rogers. If she won't cooperate, we make her cooperate."

"She doesn't know any more. How does she have to prove it?"

"She's a medic who was in there the whole time. There's stuff she's holding back. There must be." Rogers stood between Barton and Grogan's door. This felt bizarrely real still. He could still believe that Barton would hurt her if he could.

"Rogers, get out of my way."

"You're an Avenger. You come under my command. Stand down."

"Fury's order overrides yours. Get out of my way." Barton raised his voice.

"No. I'm not letting you do this." Out of the corner of his eye, Rogers could see Michaels standing at the front of his cell, watching.

"Look granddad, maybe you didn't do it this way in 1940, but guess what, it's not 1940 any more. We do what we have to now." Rogers stood his ground. "Shift."

"Barton, I am never going to let you do this."

"Get out of my way." Barton shoved him. Rogers usually wouldn't have retaliated. Barton would have had to try very hard to hurt him, but this was for show, so he pushed Barton back. Barton shoved him harder, circling round, carrying his head lower and further forward, picking his weight up to dodge. Barton shoved him again. Rogers pushed him away.

"I don't want to fight you."

"Then get out of my way."

"No." Barton feinted right, then caught Rogers in the side of the chest, not very hard, Rogers caught Barton's retreating wrist and pulled him off balance, then pushed him away. Barton stumbled and stopped himself against the opposite wall. They were both breathing hard now. "You can't take me down, you know that. Walk away." Barton growled and rushed him again. Should he intentionally take a couple of hits? This really wouldn't be a fight otherwise. Rogers let Barton past his guard. Barton rammed his shoulder in to his stomach, but Rogers had braced in time. Barton was trying to tip him over, usually a good move against a taller opponent, but Rogers doubted Barton was strong enough. Barton bunched his legs, grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him round and backwards. Rogers lost his balance, Barton was stronger than he'd thought, but threw an arm around Barton's waist. They landed on top of each other. Rogers threw Barton off and jumped back up. Barton wasn't much slower.

"You can't beat me, you know you can't." Barton started circling again. Rogers got between him and Grogan's door. He felt slightly winded from the fall, but he was OK. This time, Barton's attack was quite different, high, fast punches flew at him, almost as fast as he could block or dodge them, he didn't want to counter attack, not yet. Barton broke pattern and landed a roundhouse kick on the side of Rogers's hip, knocking him off balance. He staggered back, Barton chased him. He let Barton's next blow hit him in the chest, but got a solid hook in behind it. Barton grunted in pain and staggered sideways. Had that been too hard? Rogers straightened up, he was breathing harder than he should have needed to, but he didn't try to steady his breathing. He needed to feign an attack. He let himself breathe faster, shallower. Barton looked back up at him and charged again. Hand to hand, boxing style was probably the way to do this. They engaged again, blocking and counter attacking almost without thinking about it, Rogers was concentrating mostly on breathing badly, letting himself gasp without breathing too deeply. Barton kept coming deep within his range so lots of blows hit, but none hit hard except the hooks. A door banged open over Barton's shoulder. Fury stormed in, two guards behind him. He'd taken his sweet time.

"Get the hell off each other!" He bellowed, stepping up beside them and pulling them apart. "Rogers, you have no reason to be down here, get out." Rogers just shook his head, as though he couldn't spare the breath to speak. Fury nodded to the guards. "If he won't go, remove him." The two guards didn't look happy about being set on him. He stood his ground. In a moment, he would have to go down. The guards laid hands on his shoulders to lead him away. He spun out of their grip, throwing one to the floor, but keeping hold of him so he didn't fall too fast. He let himself fall against the wall. He braced himself with one hand and just stayed there, then fell to his knees. He heard someone cry out behind him, a woman. Grogan. The man he'd thrown down got up and retreated. He stayed where he was, still gasping. This felt so strange.

"Fury-" Barton started.

"It's happened again." Fury said. "The three of you, get him to the infirmary, before he goes in to arrest." Rogers went limp and let the three carry him out. Through the first door, they set him down again.

"That went well." Barton said, slightly breathlessly, straightening up. Rogers sat up and nodded, still breathing hard. "You OK?" Rogers nodded again.

"Think so. You?"

"Fine."

"Surprisingly convincing." Romanoff's voice said from the far doorway. She was still soaking wet. "I was worried, since you're such a bad liar, that you just wouldn't look like you meant it."

"We considered not telling you it was a set up," Barton said, picking up his bow and quiver. "but we were worried about how that might end, if you wouldn't stand down or something, or you'd actually kill me."

"You looked like you were holding back," Romanoff said, "both of you, but especially him." She nodded at Rogers. "You're supposed to be the good guy and you are on the same side, so we might get away with that." She looked at him. He was still not breathing right, that seemed to worry her. "Rogers, can you get up?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, shut up." Barton pointed at one of the monitor screens. Fury was standing face to face with Michaels, through the glass. "He's going to bring him out, he's going to talk. We need to be out of the way."

Romanoff led the three of them to an observation room, a room for people to watch the legal interrogations.

"Are you not cold?" Barton asked her as they sat down. "You're soaked."

"Clint, I'm Russian. That's cold." Rogers smiled. He was breathing pretty normally now. Romanoff looked at him. "Shut up Rogers. Russia is way colder than New York."

"I wasn't going to say where I grew up. I got frozen solid." Romanoff smiled.

"Touché." The door in to the room opened. Michaels walked in, Fury right behind him. Michaels head was down, he looked exhausted. He sat down in one chair, Fury took the other.

"So," Fury started. He was completely calm. He wasn't trying to scare Michaels now. He'd won, but he wasn't gloating, he didn't need to. "you're ready to talk to us." Michaels nodded.

"But I want immunity." He looked up at Fury. "I want immunity from the government and for nobody to know I talked. I don't know how big this thing is, I suspect my life will be in danger if I'm known to have talked." Fury nodded.

"Tell me what I want to know, we can protect you, hide you, and your family if you need that." Michaels nodded.

"OK."

"Who was running the show?"

"Ryman. I don't know if that's really his name, but the buck stopped with him, always, whether it was arguments between the guards, procedures… anything."

"Who hired Ryman?"

"I don't know. I don't know if he was hired or if he was acting alone."

"What was your aim?"

"So far as I know, Ryman was telling the truth. We were looking for a way to disable a super-soldier." Fury sat back and picked up his radio.

"Hawkeye." Barton jumped up and got as far away from the mirror as he could.

"Receiving."

"How's Rogers doing?" Barton glanced back at him.

"We got him to the medics before it got too bad. He's recovering."

"Tell them to give him atenolol." Michaels put in. "That'll stop the cardiac symptoms."

"Barton, pass that on with a warning that it does not come from a man we trust. When you can, send Rogers and a medic down here."

"Copy." Rogers got up. Barton and Romanoff shook their heads at him.

"You're meant to be in the infirmary. Go and get a doctor and brief them on the way down, don't hurry." Romanoff said. "That should get the time about right."

By the time Rogers got back, with Doctor O'Malley, he felt pretty normal again. Doctor O'Malley knew it had all been a set up, and that Michaels had been involved with whatever they'd doing to him. Fury nodded to the spare chair.

"You sit." O'Malley said. Rogers hesitated. "I'll make it an order if you don't." He sat down. Michaels looked up at him. He looked beaten, sad. He opened his mouth as though to say something, then changed his mind and looked back at Fury.

"Tell this Doctor how you intended to disable the Captain."

"We spent the first few days examining him, you. Ultrasound, X-ray, every kind of blood assay under the sun, MRI… We had some SHIELD records, I don't know how they were obtained, but not a lot. We talked about a lot of different ways, eventually we went for the autonomic nervous system." Doctor O'Malley frowned.

"Did you know that his autonomic nervous system is completely bizarre?" She asked. Michaels nodded. "So had it occurred to you that you were messing with a system you didn't understand?"

"We had some idea. Ryman didn't really seem to care that we might kill him." It was surprisingly hard not to glance left at Romanoff and Barton through the mirror.

"So what did you do?" Fury asked.

"Modified Methamphetamines, made to favour the adrenergic receptors and not cross the blood-brain barrier so much."

"That might actually work." O'Malley said. Everyone looked at her. "Part of the reason he's so physically capable is how far up his CVRS output can go from resting, the amphetamines push his heart rate up from-" She seemed to notice that neither Fury nor Rogers had the faintest idea what she was on about. She sighed. "It nearly killed him, you know that?" She said to Michaels. He looked down. "When he first came in, I though he must be bleeding out in to his pleural space or mediastinum, that's how bad he looked. Pale as a ghost, barely conscious, gasping for breath. Were you intentionally starving him?" Michaels hesitated.

"We knew if he realised what was going on, he'd be very difficult to control. We thought that if he was hypoglycaemic, he'd be weaker."

"And of course the amphetamines made that worse." Michaels nodded.

"So you think this is true." Fury asked O'Malley. She nodded.

"It explains what we couldn't explain before, but they usually have a half life of hours, not days."

"If given orally." Michaels said. "We stuck a load of it in the biggest fat deposits we could find, that dose would have been lethal IV, but we thought the slow release would keep him alive."

"Is there a way you can test this?" Fury asked.

"Now we know what we're testing for, yes, easily."

"Can it be reversed?"

"Yes." Both doctors said at once. Rogers sighed with relief. He'd be alright. They could fix this. Thank God they could fix this. Michaels looked up at him, opened his mouth again, then closed it. He looked ashamed.

"Won't it just wear off in the end?" O'Malley asked.

"Yes," Michaels said. "But I don't know how long that would take. You'd speed it up if you aspirated it. Atenolol will control the effects in the short term too." Fury breathed in slowly.

"OK, you," He looked at O'Malley. "Take Rogers and do whatever tests you need to to confirm this, and tell the guard to get me a bucket of water." Rogers got up. Michaels looked worried. "We're going to make it look like you didn't give anything up willingly." Fury said. "I'm only going to throw it over your head." Michaels nodded.

"Thank you." Rogers said as he passed him. He looked up at Rogers.

"For what?"

"For talking, for letting me know I'm not going to die or end up invalid." Michaels looked away.

"I just…" He tailed off and shook his head.


	15. Life

"and thank you that… I'm fixed, I'm not blind and I can still run properly. Thank you that Fury's crazy idea worked, thank you that Grogan didn't have to suffer to make someone else talk." Rogers paused. He was kneeling by his bed in his quarters. Michaels had broken yesterday, it had taken less than an hour for O'Malley to prove his story right, Michaels had led them to the two places the drug was, they hadn't even needed to put him out. They'd just told him to lie still, stuck a couple of big long needles in him and sucked the stuff out. He'd been told it could be a week before he was completely back to normal, but he already knew it was working. He wasn't so shivery now, he could sit still, he just felt better, fitter. It wasn't over though. Fury still had Romanoff interrogating Ryman. "God, I pray that Fury wouldn't forget who he is or why we're fighting. I pray he won't turn in to the enemy." He didn't know what Fury had Romanoff doing, but he was pretty sure it was bad. "I pray one side or the other gives up soon, I pray that justice be done in your world. Amen." Rogers stood up. His head didn't spin. Not even for a moment. He wanted to go out to train, test himself, see what he could put up with, but he'd been warned off that for a couple of days, until they were sure there hadn't been anything else. Michaels had been told in no uncertain terms by Romanoff that he would go down for murder if he, Rogers, died, and they'd probably get him tried in Texas so he'd likely be executed. He could go and ask the Armsmaster for something to do, he'd done that a couple of times since he'd been here, much to the Armsmaster's surprise, but he'd found things that needed doing. He was half way down the stairs when his radio went off.

"Rogers." Fury's voice.

"Receiving."

"Get down here, on the double." Rogers grimaced slightly. He didn't want anything to do with what Fury was doing.

"Where's here?" He thought he knew where, but he wanted to put off the inevitable.

"Interrogation room 3. On the double."

There were three people already in there. Romanoff looked tired, she'd barely slept for the past three days, Fury looked worse. There were dark circles under his eyes. Ryman looked awful, he sat hunched forwards, head dropped, leaning on the table, he looked utterly broken. Rogers felt his breath catch in his throat. He looked away. Most of the men he'd seen looking like that had just got out of Nazi captivity, admittedly he'd seen men come out of Nazi hands looking much worse than that, but there weren't many other places he'd seen make men look this bad. There were lines, and there were lines for a reason. Whatever the stakes, whatever the circumstances, there was never an excuse to do that to another man. Romanoff was standing, leaning against the wall, looking as though she wasn't paying attention, though Rogers doubted that. Fury was sitting opposite Ryman, leaning forward, hands on the table, eyes steady. He'd done it, he'd beaten Ryman in to… this state, he'd won.

"I take it you remember Captain Rogers." Fury said. Rogers looked across at Ryman, who glanced over his shoulder at him and nodded. Rogers nodded back. This felt so wrong. He was a soldier. He shouldn't let himself care what Ryman had been through. But he couldn't, Ryman was as human as he was and there was no way Ryman could hurt him, or anyone, right now. They didn't know why he'd done what he'd done, he'd coerced Grogan, who was to say he hadn't been coerced or blackmailed in turn? "Now," Fury continued, "you said you were first contacted about this… venture some months ago. Who contacted you?" Ryman curled further for a second, as though his stomach was hurting him.

"She just called herself Joseph online."

"_She_ called herself Joseph?" Fury repeated. Ryman nodded.

"She gave me everything I needed, the place, contact details for the mercs, instructions for catching him," He nodded at Rogers. "she said which road he'd be on, and that he'd go to help if he saw an accident. The mercs thought I was paying, so they always did what I said. She had files on him, medical files, which drugs would work on him and how well, so we could keep him out indefinitely if we needed to, but we realised quite quickly he'd be more use to us conscious, so she came up with a plan to make him cooperate. She came on base, gave herself an identity and became his primary point of contact, she wouldn't trust anyone else to pull it off." Rogers drew breath slowly. Grogan. Ryman was saying that Grogan had been the mastermind of the whole operation. That couldn't be right. She'd been too scared of them, and of the other side, she'd been coerced. "I've never seen a person change themselves so completely, she is a splendid actress. It was like there was two people living in her skin."

Fury straightened slightly. "Spell this out for me." He said. "Who is this woman?"

"Grogan, Joseph, whichever you call her." Romanoff straightened up. Ryman flinched as though she'd hit out at him.

"You said we should keep her as a guarantee and let the rest of you go." She paced round behind him. He shrank away from her. What must she have done to make him like that? "No one else ever said she knew anything."

"That was the plan all along. She looked like an innocent so you'd let her go, the sweet, bewildered little girl from Connecticut. Only I ever knew she knew anything. Everyone else thought I was in charge. I swear to god I'm telling the truth." Rogers looked hard at the back of Ryman's head. It was at least possible, but he couldn't believe that of Grogan. Romanoff laughed softly.

"If I even thought for a-"

Fury raised a hand. "That's enough." Romanoff stepped back. "Do you know who she was taking orders from?"

"No. She said she was working for someone, she said 'my employers' from time to time, but never more than that."

Fury sat back. "Do you think you have any reason to lie?"

Ryman curled further forwards. "Maybe to save my reputation? But what the hell? I'll never work again with this stuff on my record."

"So what are you trying to do right now?"

Ryman laughed. "Save my own sorry ass. What else is there now?"

Romanoff laughed. "Yeah, save your ass, drop her in it. She's never done anything but cooperate since we got her here."

"You haven't asked her for much."

"You two, come with me." Fury stood up and pointed at Rogers and Romanoff, then led them out in to the corridor and closed the door behind them. Rogers refused to meet his eyes. "Do you think he's telling the truth?" Fury asked.

"Yes." Romanoff said at once. "He hasn't got it left in him to lie now, it would have been a brave lie to tell, and it does make sense."

"No it doesn't." Rogers said. "She can't be the mastermind, it's got to be him. That's what every other account says."

"But if only Ryman knew about it-" Fury started.

"Fury, the problem with torture – well, one of them – is that people will say anything to make it stop. That's all you've done, you've made Ryman say what he thinks will make you leave him alone and hurt someone else."

"But it makes sense." Romanoff started. "It's a perfect way to be on the ground, but not risk being interrogated, and she had a way of interrogating you, you never even realised it was happening." Rogers looked at her blankly. "Asking you about peoples personal lives. It was genius. You were desperate for company so you let her ask, it gives her a way to bring down Iron Man." Fury looked at her blankly. "Look, if I wanted to stop Stark, I wouldn't try to beat him in a fight, he's too strong. I'd kidnap Pots, bloody her up and tell Stark I'd kill her if he didn't do what I wanted." Rogers closed his eyes for a second. It fitted. It was at least possible, but it seemed pretty unlikely.

"Rogers?" Fury asked.

"If she is putting it on, she's very good."

"Bring her in to room two, don't let on that we suspect her. Don't spook her."

Grogan was hiding against the front wall when he opened the door, Romanoff just out of her sight. She jumped up and backed in to the far corner. Rogers spread his hands in front of him.

"Hey, it's only me. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"_He's_ not with you." Her hands were clenched fists at her sides. She looked terrified.

"No. It's only me. We just have a few questions for you, we're still trying to figure this out." She shook her head and shrank back.

"They're going to torture me."

"No they're not."

"They tortured Ryman and the others."

"They won't because I won't let them. I'll stay with you, I won't let them hurt you." He meant that. Even if she was the mastermind, she didn't deserve to be treated like that. She shook her head. Something was wrong in her face, Something had changed in the way she looked at him. She was staring at him as though she was trying to figure him out.

"Where is Ryman?" He hesitated.

"I'm not sure." He wasn't completely sure, Ryman could have been moved without his knowing. Her breath caught. She was wild-eyed now, either someone had hurt her, badly, or something of Ryman's story was true. "Look, this is just about details, things we can cross check. There's nothing here to be scared of." But she looked scared, but the fear in her face was mutating, changing in to something more like resolve. She straightened her back, breathing hard through her nose, brought both hands up towards her face as though being forced to at gunpoint, then threw something in to her mouth.

"What did you take?" Romanoff appeared behind him. Grogan champed her jaws once. Rogers's reasoning caught up with his eyes. She was trying to poison herself. They had to get the stuff out of her. They might only have seconds. Both of them started forwards. "Hold her." Romanoff said. Grogan centred her weight, breathing fast. She looked like a different person. Every movement looked like it belonged to somebody else. She ducked Rogers's advancing arm, one of her legs came up to hit him in the groin. He twisted away. She was fast. Romanoff punched her hard in the stomach, but she'd braced. She spun and back kicked Romanoff high in the chest. She'd been well taught. Romanoff grunted, but caught Grogan's supporting leg and pulled her off balance. Grogan stumbled. Her arms flew out. Rogers caught her by one arm and pulled her over. He threw her to the ground and held her there. Romanoff crouched beside him, grabbed Grogan by the hair and pulled her head back. Grogan was struggling madly but they were far too strong for her. She screamed. Romanoff pushed her cheeks in to hold her mouth open, let go of her hair and put her hand in Grogan's mouth.

"Come on, it's still in here." She muttered. Then she yelped in pain and pulled her hand back. Grogan had bitten her, hard, she was bleeding. "No, gone." Romanoff backhanded Grogan across the face. She'd stopped struggling. She was gasping for breath, frothing at the mouth. He'd seen this before. Right after he'd taken the serum, the Hydra agent that had pushed out a fake tooth and died on the ground in front of him. Romanoff hadn't given up though. "If we can make her sick," They were fighting a losing battle. If it was the same stuff the man who'd shot Erskine had taken, and it looked like it, she was dead. But he wasn't going to not try. He looped one arm round her torso and pulled her head back with the other. She wasn't struggling now, just lying in his arms, gasping. Romanoff pulled her mouth open and reached in. Grogan coughed and jerked, then went still. Her head flopped down to one side, whitish, blood tinged foam dripping from her open mouth. Romanoff laid a hand on the side of Grogan's neck and shook her head. She got up and cursed once. "She's dead." Rogers nodded. He could smell bitter almonds around Grogan's mouth.

"Cyanide." He concluded. Romanoff nodded.

"We never had a chance. She guessed Ryman had broken, she guessed she was exposed, and we have no way of finding her employers." Rogers set her down gently and laid her straight. Romanoff looked back at him. "You OK?" Rogers nodded once.

"I've seen this before, it's just… until the moment she took the pill, I believed her, I believed she was innocent." Romanoff sighed.

"People lie, she lied well." She picked up her radio and told Fury what had happened. Rogers closed Grogan's eyes and mouth and wiped the blood and foam away, so she didn't look like her death had been so bad. He'd always done that for civilians, even if she'd just about proven Ryman right by killing herself… she looked like the frightened girl from Connecticut again now, the last few minutes felt unreal somehow. The change in her had been so sudden, but if Lucy Grogan had been an act all along, that made sense, even if he didn't want it to. He couldn't let this stand, he had to pray, even though it was too late for her.

"Lord Jesus," Rogers started silently, he wouldn't pray aloud in front of Romanoff, "I'm sorry we got this wrong, sorry we didn't save her. I know she's in your hands, I don't know if she was saved," He doubted it though, she'd asked if praying helped once. "but I do know that whatever decision you make with her, it will be just. It's harsh, I don't always like it, but help me not to forget that I wouldn't want to live in a world without justice."

Fury came in a couple of minutes later, neither of them had moved, Romanoff was still standing by the wall, Rogers was still kneeling next to the body. Fury looked across them.

"There was nothing you could have done." He said. "If it was cyanide, once she's swallowed it, it's damn near impossible to save them."

"It was cyanide." Romanoff said, scuffing at the floor. "Looked like it, smelled like it, killed her quick enough…"

"The only question is, how did she get it in here?" Romanoff crouched down by Grogan's head and ran a hand round the inside of her mouth.

"No false tooth." She withdrew her hand. Rogers closed Grogan's mouth again. "We never cavity searched her, so she could've done it that way."

"She'd have had to have it on her when we arrested her." Rogers said. "I guess she'd have had enough warning, it took us a few minutes to get through the guard."

"Unless somebody slipped it to her since." Romanoff said. Rogers and Fury looked at her. "Somebody on this base slipped it to her somehow because they're working for whoever paid her." Fury sighed.

"Almost every guard on site has rotated through here in the past few days, more have had contact with her food, bedding…"

"They're agents of SHIELD." Rogers said. "Don't we trust our own men?" Romanoff shrugged.

"You can never rule it out. Anyone can betray you."

**Thanks to Fell4 and my Mum (who doesn't even like Marvel) for beta, to my brother for learning to imagine with me and to God for creating the world and everything in it, including brains to think of stories, and for being a hope to the hopeless for millennia.**


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